The RCN is designed to be community-driven and open to new ideas and participants. The RCN Leadership will oversee all network activities and manage the network to facilitate working group activities, however, the growth and trajectory of the RCN will largely be driven by network participants and the priorities of the community of researchers working to understand insect decline.
The RCN does not have a conventional organizational structure with a rigid flow of information and ideas through a pre-defined hierarchy (i.e. with committees reporting to chairs who report to an executive committee, etc.). Instead, to facilitate expansion to include community members—especially students and those with interests or expertise outside of professional entomology, conservation biology, and evidence synthesis—and to enable the focus on new perspectives, we are managing the RCN as a flexible n-dimensional network, where dimensions include Research Themes, Working Groups, products, participants, stakeholders, diversity, etc. The flexibility of this approach enables new members to join either by integrating into existing Working Groups or by developing their ideas into a new Working Group.
Shown below is the network for initial working groups; as the RCN grows, we will continue to add new working groups, form buds off of existing working groups, and participants can join as many working groups as are relevant to their interests, which decentralizes the flow of information. To learn more about which Working Groups are currently active and find out more about what they do, visit the Working Groups page and get in touch with group leaders to join the effort or learn more.