(New Publication) Towards red listing understudied tropical insects: A case study of the dung beetles of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo

The IUCN Red List is the most authoritative source of the extinction risk of species and is widely used to inform conservation actions. However, tropical insects are very much under-represented in the Red List due to multiple reasons: limited data on species distributions and trends, difficulties in applying the Red List Criteria, lack of coordination between tropical entomologists and the IUCN structures responsible for publishing official assessments.

In our latest publication in Insect Conservation and Diversity, we present a practical approach for applying the IUCN Red List framework to tropical insect groups, and performed a regional and global assessment of 159 dung beetle species from Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

Video abstract. Created by Marx Yim.

Here, we assembled a dataset of over 30,000 occurrence records, which included our comprehensive GBIF dataset of records from Sabah and additional records from other parts of the world, and applied the Red List Criterion B (i.e. geographic range). To estimate the metrices within this criterion, we also developed new R scripts that are designed for batch processing multiple species at once and are compatible with the latest R version and spatial packages.

Finalising the Red List category for Copris gibbulus (global assessment). Source: Ong et al., 2026.

By incorporating expert validation, we finalised the Red List categories of 74 species (47% of 159 species) and 81 species (51% of 159 species) in the regional and global assessments respectively. These assessments can now be objectively used to guide future conservation and research actions on both regional and global scales.

Regional and global assessment of 159 dung beetle species from Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Source: Ong et al., 2026.

In our study, we collaborated with members of the IUCN SSC Dung Beetle Specialist Group and its Red List authority to prepare and submit our assessments to the IUCN Red List and National Red List. Our example thus highlights the importance of SSC Specialist Groups for knowledge exchange and engagement between tropical entomologists and the wider Red List community, especially in providing training and encouraging more Red Listing assessments of under-represented insect groups.

The paper is published as open-access at: https://resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/icad.70045