Harnessing behavioral psychology to encourage individuals' adoption of pollinator conservation behaviors

The economic and ecological importance of pollinators and the increasingly evident decline of their populations have drawn concern from scientists, governments, and individuals alike. While research has focused on the ecological causes and solutions to pollinator declines, it is less understood how to motivate actual behavior changes to help conserve pollinators. Behavioral psychologists have developed many theories to explain how human behavioral drivers affect the adoption of pro-environmental behaviors such as recycling and other sustainability actions. A comprehensive model incorporating norm activation theory, the new ecological paradigm, values-belief-norm theory, and the theory of planned behavior suggests various psychological determinants that drive changes in pro-environmental behaviors. A survey was constructed using Qualtrics software to measure and analyze >1,500 individuals' responses to questions designed to test the relationships between different types of pollinator conservation behaviors and the sociopsychological determinants of an individual's intention to perform said behaviors. Previous behaviors, issue awareness, and positive attitudes toward pollinators consistently predict increased intention to perform pollinator conservation behaviors, which supports related research on pro-environmental behaviors. Other determinants, such as ascription of responsibility and perceived behavioral control, had positive effects on the intention to perform some of the tested pollinator conservation behaviors. Understanding these relationships could help improve efforts to educate and increase the adoption of these pollinator conservation behaviors. Finally, many determinants had mixed and fewer significant relationships with the intention to perform conservation behaviors, which suggests the need for revisions to the specific wording of the survey tools and additional testing of these psychological determinants

Trapping \u3ci\u3ePhyllophaga \u3c/i\u3espp. (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae) in the United States and Canada using sex attractants.

The sex pheromone of the scarab beetle, Phyllophaga anxia, is a blend of the methyl esters of two amino acids, L-valine and L-isoleucine. A field trapping study was conducted, deploying different blends of the two compounds at 59 locations in the United States and Canada. More than 57,000 males of 61 Phyllophaga species (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae) were captured and identified. Three major findings included: (1) widespread use of the two compounds [of the 147 Phyllophaga (sensu stricto) species found in the United States and Canada, males of nearly 40% were captured]; (2) in most species intraspecific male response to the pheromone blends was stable between years and over geography; and (3) an unusual pheromone polymorphism was described from P. anxia. Populations at some locations were captured with L-valine methyl ester alone, whereas populations at other locations were captured with L-isoleucine methyl ester alone. At additional locations, the L-valine methyl ester-responding populations and the L-isoleucine methyl ester-responding populations were both present, producing a bimodal capture curve. In southeastern Massachusetts and in Rhode Island, in the United States, P. anxia males were captured with blends of L-valine methyl ester and L-isoleucine methyl ester