EDITORIAL NOTES 1 3 Journal of Insect Conservation (2022) 26:337–338 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-022-00404-4 have emerged from the publications here was the value of planting of floral strips or other methods to increase local habitat heterogeneity within the crop. Harris and Ratnieks (2022) reviews the use of clover for benefit of bees and dis- cuss the value of this measure for farmers. While the use of planted wildflower strips are shown to be beneficial for bees (van Drunen et al. 2022), butterflies (Kolkman et al. 2022), spiders (Rischen et al. 2022) and pollinators in faba bean crops (Sentil et al. 2022; Schmied et al. 2022) also showed such plantings have value for biodiversity even if they are annually mulched. Another theme that emerged in this special issue was the role of grazing for conserving biodiversity in rangelands. Bussan (2022) shows that provided grazing is moderate to low intensity, it can have benefits to butterflies and could be part of land sharing systems. In fact, livestock systems are reservoirs of spider diversity in Uruguay (Pompozzi et al. 2022), although this is not an effective strategy in conserv- ing alpine grasshopper communities against climate change (Illich et al. 2022). In response to the biodiversity crisis, and specifically the pressures from agricultural intensification, we need novel solutions to mitigate threats from unsustainable land use (Samways et al. 2020). Insects and other invertebrates con- tribute an enormous amount towards ecosystem services such as pest control, soil formation and pollination (Car- doso et al. 2020) and their loss from these systems would be detrimental to the functioning of agricultural ecosystems (Raven and Wagner 2021). Thus, conservation of insects in agricultural ecosystems is as important for biodiversity as it is for the farmers growing crops. The solutions to insect conservation within agriculture need to consider the protec- tion of biodiversity and conservation of ecosystem services. In this special issue, we bring together 14 scientific papers which address why we should conserve insect diversity in agricultural landscapes, how best to conserve insect diver- sity and maintain ecosystem services provided by insects and other arthropods. Most of the papers address ways in which we can improve our agricultural systems, which are not detrimental for biodiversity. One of the major themes to  James S. Pryke jpryke@sun.ac.za 1 Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, 7602 Matieland, Western Cape, South Africa 2 Department of Conservation Biology and Social-Ecological Systems, UFZ – Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Halle, Germany 3 iDiv – German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Leipzig, Germany 4 Institute of Biological Sciences, University of the Philippines Los Baños, College, Laguna, Philippines 5 Centre for Agroecology Water and Resilience, Coventry University, Coventry, UK 6 Department of Integrative Biology and Biodiversity Research, Institute of Zoology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Gregor-Mendel-Straße 33, 1180 Vienna, Austria 7 Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), Herman Teirlinckgebouw, Havenlaan 88 box 73, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium 8 Radboud Institute for Biological and Environmental Sciences (RIBES), Radboud University, PO Box 9010, NL-6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands 9 Departamento de Conservación de la Biodiversidad, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Carretera Panamericana & Periférico Sur S/N, 29290, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México Accepted: 6 May 2022 / Published online: 19 May 2022 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Journal of Insect Conservation’s special issue on insect diversity in Agriculture James S. Pryke 1  · Josef Settele 2,3,4  · Barbara Smith 5  · Sophie Kratschmer 6  · Dirk Maes 7,8  · Jorge L León-Cortés 9