Insect Numbers Down 25% Since 1990, Global Study Finds (theguardian.com) 62
The biggest assessment of global insect abundances to date shows a worrying drop of almost 25% in the last 30 years, with accelerating declines in Europe that shocked scientists. From a news report: The analysis combined 166 long-term surveys from almost 1,700 sites and found that some species were bucking the overall downward trend. In particular, freshwater insects have been increasing by 11% each decade following action to clean up polluted rivers and lakes. However, this group represent only about 10% of insect species and do not pollinate crops. Researchers said insects remained critically understudied in many regions, with little or no data from South America, south Asia and Africa. Rapid destruction of wild habitats in these places for farming and urbanization is likely to be significantly reducing insect populations, they said. Insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times, and are essential to the ecosystems humanity depends upon. They pollinate plants, are food for other creatures and recycle nature's waste.
Debug! (Score:2)
https://debug.com/ [debug.com]
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I think we need to figure out a way to pollinate our crops without them then, or find something symbiotic for the various crops we cultivate. I know bee-keepers make a living renting out their bees to pollinate fields. Maybe there should be increased investment in these sorts of activities, and research to increase its productivity.
I do think some insect reduction is a great thing, especially in those that harbor diseases like malaria.
Re: Debug! (Score:1)
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If all mosquitoes and locusts were wiped out permanently no one would shed a tear.
Sigh, typical misconceptions of the uninformed and uneducated. First off, locusts and mosquitoes are part of the food chain, wipe them out and you also may wipe out their predators and destroy that entire part of the genome mesh. The law of unintended consequences kicks in and who's to say what else disappears, like maybe a species we do depend on? Furthermore, it's likely that a species will just re-evolve to fill that niche, and who knows, the replacement may be worse, or tougher, as in now immune to your
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I've read where housecats kill one billion birds a year and folks wring their hands and automatically think we should stop the carnage. But can you imagine if there were another billion birds in the world?
The web of life. We're all interdependent and taking even just 10% of anything off the table has far-reaching consequences.
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Accurate joking aside, I'm wondering if anyone actually checked the link. That site is details on a Google engineer led project to eliminate mosquitoes. Those Google $$$ got them the perfect domain name for the project.
Re:Great, Fuck Insects (Score:5, Informative)
Crops. Pollinators. Damn you're stupid.
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Primary infection vectors for countless diseases that ravage primarily equatorial dark skinned population. Damn you're racist.
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Which is kind of like saying all Americans are depraved murderous psychopaths because of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gaicy.
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I was thinking more because of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, or maybe Timothy McVeigh. Patrick Crusius comes to mind as well. Dylann Roof? Stephen Paddock certainly fits the bill of a murderous psychopath.
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I merely used the exact same phraseology as the OP to demonstrate how idiotic his statement was.
Most of the insect "numbers down" likely comes from our fight against malaria and other insect-born diseases. We're drying out massive amounts of swamps and other bodies of stale water where mosquitoes breed in our desperate attempt to slow down the absolute ravaging of South Asian populations that malaria is currently conducting in South Asia where drug resistant malaria has become firmly entrenched. We're actin
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Yeah, let's wipe out all mosquitoes, and anything that depends upon them as a food source.
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Absolutely. Just like we wiped out anything that depended on us as food source.
Actual biodiversity is where we can support maybe a million people on the planet, in horrifying conditions by modern standards, where median age is around 10-15 years old and most of this life is life of extreme stress, suffering and privation. You know, just like every animal in the wild.
The reason we no longer have to have that kind of life is because we mercilessly exterminated many factors that caused life to be that way. And
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Re:Great, Fuck Insects (Score:4, Interesting)
And all the animals that use insects as their major food source. We don't need them, either, right?
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Fuck insects, we can learn to live without them.
Are you a flower? If so, please demonstrate the correctness of your opinion by evolving to self-pollinate. NOW.
Interesting insects when you travel to rural place (Score:1)
It was amazing how the evening sky was filled with dragonflies (literally many hundreds visible just by looking up); butterflies; and all sorts of other bugs.
Wonder if much of the world was like that before pesticides became common.
Re:Interesting insects when you travel to rural pl (Score:4, Interesting)
I have seen 2 eyes of a Peacock this spring versus 1 in the 20 years prior. Several Greyling butterflies (versus zero in the last two years). A couple of small blues - something I have not seen in a decade.
Sure, it is nothing like a meadow somewhere in the mountains of Eastern Europe, but it is much better than previous years. Is it the lockdown or the restrictions on neonicotinoids? Dunno. Time will tell.
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It's funny that you should mention that. I've seen bees in my neighborhood twice since the lockdown started, versus only once over the almost 19 years prior. I realize that correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation, but it does imply that closer study might be warranted. :-)
Not the least bit surprised (Score:3)
Likewise, growing up in Texas, and then Northern Ill in the 60s we were LOADED with fireflies. Went to Illinois in 1915/6 time and was shocked at how few there were.
Over and over I see that ppl are killing insects with the likes of Bayer's pesticides that have been shown to do a number on Bees, moths, butterflies, etc.
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Guess you aren't looking too hard: https://www.enviropest.com/how... [enviropest.com]
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Yeah, thankfully, it is rare to see cockroaches or mosquitoes here. Cleaner homes combined with a lack of still water prevents those 2 from breeding here.
O
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Interestingly enough, they form a huge part of black bear diet in the late spring.
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Interestingly enough, they form a huge part of black bear diet in the late spring.
oh crap. Was not aware of that.
That would explain why black bears are coming down to evergreen/conifer/etc areas.
We have had several show up just south of and into Highlands Ranch Area.
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Same here in Australia. We used to have the skies covered with Bogong moths for a week each year in Sydney when I was young
They'd swarm and try and get into your house - thousands and thousands of them
I don't notice them at all now
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Insect weight = 17x human (Score:1)
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There were before European honeybees were introduced, and still are, a LOT of pollinating species in the Americas. Our townhouse yard (which we made into a registered wildlife habitat) has a number of them, by design. (Our front yard is native plants to feed and attract them, along with pest predators, so in our back yard urban farm we've had no trouble getting crops to grow.)
Mason bees, leafcutter bees, several other solitary bees I haven't identified (giant yellow ones, black ones, yellow-jacketed black
Probably not counting (Score:2)
Bedbugs, locusts, mosquitoes, ticks and lice.
Which from what I've heard are growing in population almost unchecked.
Bees, Butterflies, fireflies, Mantis are a completely different issue.
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Depends on the study.. (Score:3, Informative)
Scientific American; “insect Armageddon” Nov 2018: https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
UN Environment Programme 76% decrease https://www.unenvironment.org/... [unenvironment.org]
and then there's the contrary:
phy.org Nov 2019 No Insect Armageddon - https://phys.org/news/2019-11-... [phys.org]
Then there's the whole debate on global warming, if it exists or not. hell, we can't even agree anymore on what a "fact" is...
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hen there's the whole debate on global warming, if it exists or not. hell, we can't even agree anymore on what a "fact" is...
I think the problem is that people like to bundle a lot of interpretation on top of easily verifiable objective facts. I don't think many people would consider it too controversial to show temperature data over time and show that it's been increasing now. The problem is that some people take that and then shove on unproven explanations for the data that we're meant to accept and then go another step further by tacking on political policy to those hypotheses. Does that mean everyone who advances some opinion
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By "unproven explanations" you mean thermodynamics, one of the most reliable and demonstrated theories in history. CO2 has the properties it has, and the Universe's bookkeeping takes care of the rest. Increase the thermal equilibrium of the lower atmosphere, it gets warmer.
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It'd be cool to get much more data. The "radar" laser zapper which could differentiate between male and female mosquito for instance - could that tech be repurposed to use size and wing frequency data to start monitoring various areas? The data can be compared year to year.
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Eventually we'll win... (Score:2)
...I mean, 7.5 BILLION people all trying to kill them every time we see one, eventually we have to start beating them. I mean it was inevitable.
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They have a few more weeks to stage a comeback nearly uncontested. Let's see how it turns out.
WTH Germany? (Score:2)
Recent analyses from some locations have found collapses in insect abundance, such as 75% in Germany
What are you people doing? Solar and wind killing them all?
This is not winning (Score:4, Insightful)
Insects are crucial to soil health and pollination. They're primary food supply for countless vertebrates. They're involved in symbiotic relationships all over the place. You cannot pull them out and not rip out a huge part of the biosphere along with them.
I rarely see the number of birds I remember seeing as a child. Losing insects makes most every other kind of life more scarce.
Really, humanity? Just go to Mars if you want to live on a barren planet. You can't poison everything that inconveniences you and not expect some blow-back.
Some people like it that way (Score:2)
It makes driving faster (Score:3)
You don't have to stop every 50 miles to clean the windshield like we had to in the seventies.
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Yeah but back then the goo on the windshield reduced air friction meaning you didn't need to stop so often for fuel so it balanced itself out.
Serious reply: No one has ever stopped to clean a windshield. People cleaned windshields while they were stopped for other reasons (food / petrol).
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"Serious reply: No one has ever stopped to clean a windshield. People cleaned windshields while they were stopped for other reasons (food / petrol)."
Sorry, but I traveled in the south of France, Italy and Spain and you couldn't see shit in the sunshine when 1500 bugs were on your windshield.
Yay! (Score:2)
I don't need pollinators. Besides, most insects don't pollinate anything useful. We are moving to totally synthetic foods anyway. Then we don't need no insects. We only need carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, potassium (just thought I would throw that in there), a few other elements, and energy.
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I'm guessing that you're really looking forward to breathing CO2, N2, and not much else?
LOL, "global warming" (Score:1)
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I actually have a pet theory on that - it may not be the global warming per se that is causing the decline of insects, but a follow on effect.
I'm thinking that global warming has shifted the ideal environment for various insects, so the local environment is no longer ideal. Just evolution in action - as soon as the species adapt, or move to get a better fit, they'll be back. With bells on.
Ants... (Score:2)
... In my area, I see a lot more Argentine ants and red imported fire ants (RIFAs), They don't even fight each other. They're killing off the native species too though. :(
Decline & rise? (Score:2)
I'm sure that there is decline in certain insects, no doubt bees are get the most attention of all.
But at the same time i'm also convinced other insects are on the rise, there are some that you hardly would find 10 years ago, but now they are everywhere.
Possibly the decline of one type of insect has given rise to others, still the overal count is most likely down.