Googling Insects as a New Trend in Cultural Entomology: An Italian Perspective

Abstract

Cultural entomology (CE) explores the interactions between the world of insects and mankind. Since the internet plays a major role in nowadays life, it would be of great interest to investigate the insects-related internet usage and activities. However, there are very few studies about this. For this reason, inspired by the seminal work carried out by the Japanese Takada, we decided to replicate his findings. We analyzed with Google Trends and with the wavelet power spectrum analysis (WPSA) the hit-search volumes of the most common insects. We found that the five most commonly searched insects are bees, butterflies, mosquitoes, ants and spiders which are arachnids, but are commonly believed to be insects. We found a seasonality for some insects, as confirmed by the WPSA, and with peaks related to the seasonal period in which the insects are most visible, while we could not detect any regularity or trend for other insects, which are not clearly related to any particular season. In addition, we proved that, at least in some cases, hit-search volumes were influenced by the media and that the degree of seasonal regularity as measured by the WPSA was variable. Thus, we have proven the robustness of previous finding, extending their validity also in another culture and another context. Therefore, rather than being confined to a specific culture, googling insects could be a universal behavior and attitude, even though with some cross-cultural differences. Further systematic research is needed to shed light on this topic.

From science to society to practice? Public reactions to the insect crisis in Germany

“…Also, it is the time to instal an insect hotel as many insects emerge. The seasonal patterns therefore reflect both human and animal behaviour and changes therein, effects that were also found by Mittermeier et al (2019), Soulsbury (2020) and Bragazzi (2014). That there is no seasonal pattern in the Insektensterben index of search activity pattern corroborates the interpretation that the interest in insect die‐off was influenced “externally”, that is, by the Hallmann et al (2017) publication, rather than by upcoming spring.…”

¿Estamos perdiendo de vista el control biológico de insectos en el ciberespacio?

“…These non-reactive methods for social science research through text mining and socialmedia analytics all resort under the newly-minted term 'culturomics' (Michel et al, 2011), and have readily been embraced by political science, sociology, linguistics and also conservation biology disciplines (Jarić et al, 2019). Pioneering yet geographically-restricted work has been done in the entomology domain by Takada (2011Takada ( , 2013 and Bragazzi (2014) in Japan and Italy, respectively. However, to our knowledge, culturomics have so far not been used to analyze global public sentiment and interest in aspects associated with agro-ecology or sustainable agriculture in general, nor insect biological control in specific (Wyckhuys et al, in press) (Wyckhuys et al, Science of the Total Enviroment in Press).…”