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Where Have All the Insects Gone? (sciencemag.org)
Entomologists have been assessing diversity and abundance across western Germany and have found that between 1989 and 2013 the biomass of invertebrates caught had fallen by nearly 80 percent. From an article on Science magazine: Scientists have tracked alarming declines in domesticated honey bees, monarch butterflies, and lightning bugs. But few have paid attention to the moths, hover flies, beetles, and countless other insects that buzz and flitter through the warm months. "We have a pretty good track record of ignoring most noncharismatic species," which most insects are, says Joe Nocera, an ecologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. [...] A new set of long-term data is coming to light, this time from a dedicated group of mostly amateur entomologists who have tracked insect abundance at more than 100 nature reserves in western Europe since the 1980s. Over that time the group, the Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons, the group -- which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades -- found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites. Such losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost hopes that it's not representative -- that it's some strange artifact."
Cellphones killed them, every one.
When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn? /#
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I attributed it to climate change and loss of continuous habitat.
It's actually a week-old story, but I only spotted it today. (It wasn't pitched by any reader.) Apologies for running what seems like an old story, but we found it important enough to run it. Thanks.
It's nearly summer here, we got 23C today, and most of the leaves have sprung everywhere. But indeed - where are the insects? Yes, there are the odd bumblebee here and there, but this place (right in the middle of mother nature) is usually buzzing with insects this time of the year, but there is hardly any.
Of course - I can't say that I miss the Mosquito, in fact - it's my sworn enemy, but the rest of the insect hordes seems to be gone as well, I hardly see any banana flies, moths or any common insects here out in the wilderness any more. Maybe there is something going on here?
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I used to think that climate change would only make mammals go extinct and that invertebrates and insects and bacteria, etc. would adapt and survive.
However, it looks like the insects are going... earth will need to start over from a clean slate. It should only take a few hundred million years for a carboniferous period to create conditions for mammal like creatures again.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Every night in the summer in WV you'd see them flying all around. I haven't seen a single on in many years. Very sad.
"Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report, 2015 to 2019", more accurate than the Farmers' Almanac.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Scientists have tracked alarming declines in domesticated honey bees, monarch butterflies, and lightning bugs. But few have paid attention to the moths, hover flies, beetles, and countless other insects"
In other news,:birds eating those missing insects are declining rapidly as well.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
The world's missing mosquitos are in my backyard. Everyone is welcome to them, just let me know when you want to come pick them up.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
I had two thoughts when reading this:
1) Saying "no" to this headline is far less satisfying than it should be. Betteridge's Law of Headlines has apparently failed me again!
2) That (though I don't think it to be the case) the evidence could just as easily back up the theory that--after decades of work--these researchers have successfully bred/selected the members of the insect species such that they no longer fall into those particular varieties of traps. I.e. More or less what you said, except that they've culled the weak from the herd, rather than teaching them.
Those bloodsuckers caught me off-guard last weekend.
I'm sure they will outlast the Human species, and live on to plague the next dominant species. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Oh yeah? Well how do you know that the Krefeld Entomological Society aren't ones killing all the damn bugs? There's no way to ever know that for sure, so I say, we play it safe and just assume that's what's really happening. Now the real question is, what are we going to do about it? I say take their shoes off so they won't be able to crush the insects so easily. Take their shoes and laugh at them. That'll bring the fucking bugs back. Their MEMORIES, that is! Which we will all hold in OUR OWN SHOES!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
This has some scary downstream implications - bird migrations will immediately change, and the ecosystem will have geographic pockets of abundance and scarcity due to that. Food pollination also comes to mind. Corporations do not react to emotional pressures [often] - so any link from pesticide/herbicide usage to lack of pollinators will require a round of market disruption. Even then, the answer may not be insects but something like humans or drones to artificially pollinate sustenance plants until unequivocal proof is found that insects were affect by these chemicals.
/s
It shows some bees and it said, "If we go we're taking you with us" *handed cease and desist order* Dammit! I should have read your article about stealing jokes first! :(
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Sir, I don't understand. Who needs a knife in a nuke fight anyway?
This report sounds pretty suspicious. As is mentioned, loss of insects to that degree would have huge implications for the entire biomass - which we are not seeing.
I question the duration of the period being studied and the consistency of collection technique. Who is to say they did not have a much higher number of insects than normal when they started collecting? Or perhaps they over-fished the area they were collecting from and CAUSED the crash in local populations...
Personally I've noticed no decrease in insect population in my local area...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When I was a kid you could see tens of thousands fireflies at night in the country around here. In the early eighties the pine beetle started spreading through the tree farms around here. They started aerial spraying of pesticides to kill them and in just a few years you stopped seeing them at all. In the last decade or so they have reappeared, in very low numbers.
How do we know it is not evolution and survival of the fittest? Maybe all of the stupid bugs have been weaned out of the gene pool over the years and now they can't catch the ones smart enough to avoid the traps.
All is quiet on the Western Front...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It's actually evolution in action. All of the stupid insects in the area are being caught by these traps, thus removing their lower intelligence from the local gene pool. Over time the insects that are breeding are only having smarter offspring, so they aren't getting caught in these traps. It's the long term results of the observer effect. I heard that in the areas that have been doing this the longest, many of the traps have been vandalized by what appear to be tiny stone weapons.
The effect might not be immediate.
Insects (not just bees) play a huge part in pollination. You should see a dramatic drop in plant growth if nothing else if the insect population had declined by 80% - not to mention the also immediate effect on populations of birds and other animals that rely on a daily intake of insects to survive.
Ecosystems are very complex, and can be fragile in ways we don't even suspect
I guess they aren't fragile after all if you can drop 80% of insects with no immediate observed effect.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We'll just have to wait for the next drop from the Shadow Brokers
They should come checkout my backyard - it seems to have plenty of bugs in it, even with three pots of pitcher plants.
Because an alarming ecological story comes up, and without evidence or even a rational hypothetical cause, it's immediately blamed on climate change.
Most insects are herbivorous, so rely on plants for food. Global warming (increasing global temperatures, higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations, shorter winters) are conducive to plant growth. So you'd actually expect temperatures increasing by a few degrees to lead to more insects, not fewer.
Loss of continuous habitat is possible, but I'd consider it unlikely. Larger species are more susceptible to that than smaller ones like insects. We would've noticed the loss of biomass there first.
My bet is on pesticides. You state later that Canada and the EU are eco-friendly, therefore speculating that they use less pesticides. But this map (pages 17, 47-49) shows the EU uses more pesticides per hectare than the U.S./Canada, and are only exceeded by China and some South and Central American countries. (The EU uses more pesticides than the U.S. and Canada because it has less arable land but more population. So to feed itself the EU needs to grow more food per hectare.) Pesticide use in kg/ha is down slightly since 1989, but I suspect this is more than offset by development of more effective pesticides.
Here in the US the only place there are bees are where people are actively putting effort into their hives. Still there are very few bees flying around when you approach the hives here in CA US. I suspect pesticides and Chemtrails: http://www.aircrap.org/
When I was a kid there were always bees and dragonflies around. Now the only bees you see are the introduced ones (I live in Tasmania - someone solved the pollination problem way illegally importing them and releasing them). I miss the dragonflies though - as far as your average bug goes they were always the most exciting thing on the wing. We still seem to have wasps though - they seem to be thriving :-(
Because an alarming ecological story comes up, and without evidence or even a rational hypothetical cause, it's immediately blamed on climate change.
The article does not mention global warming or climate change at all. A much more likely culprit is Neonicotinoid pesticides. An interesting tidbit form the article is that they have been able to reconstruct some avian diets from the 40's round th etime DDT came into use. Possibly smoked the beetles pretty good, and after DDT was outlawed, thee beetles only made a small comeback.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Most insects are herbivorous, so rely on plants for food. Global warming (increasing global temperatures, higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations, shorter winters) are conducive to plant growth. So you'd actually expect temperatures increasing by a few degrees to lead to more insects, not fewer.
Perhaps, assuming that the increased plant growth is the only thing that happens. Which it probably doesn't.
Ezekiel 23:20
A much more likely culprit is Neonicotinoid pesticides.
Unlikely. Neonicotinoid pesticides were banned in Germany almost a decade ago.
So you'd actually expect temperatures increasing by a few degrees to lead to more insects, not fewer.
You misunderstand. There are not fewer insects, but fewer species of insects. Their number has not diminished, their diversity has.
Every time I drive my Mustang on the interstate highways, I think 2/3 of the states insect population ends up on the front & windshield of my car.
When I was a kid the porch spot lights on my mothers house in rural Western MD would attract an insane swarm of hundreds of bugs on a summer night.
These days you get about a dozen or so bugs flying around them.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Chemtrails? Are you lunatics still around? I thought your pet "theory" had gone the way of orgone energy and hollow earth.
We have more bugs here than we've ever had this year, and we've lived here for about a decade.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And the cause is probably that humans to a large extent try to eradicate what we think is weed. There are also some insects and plants that depends on forest fires for their survival.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Right. In the same way that every time a newspaper reports on a fatal car accident and mentioned the fact that the dead weren't wearing their seat belts, just proves how pervasive and devious the Newtonian Conspiracy is when promoting their liberal seat belt-wearing agenda.
Remedial biology fail. Every mass extinction in history has resulted from the environment changing too fast for life to adapt to new conditions. Guess what happens when humans change the environment faster than life can adapt - and that's before even approaching the subject of climate change.
But don't mind me. Go on back to spreading the gospel of Jenny McCarthy while giving lead-painted toys to your kids and feeding them oatmeal steeped in arsenic, sending them off to school with a pack of Camels in each of their backpacks. Because science is a Big Lubrul conspiracy.
My entire neighborhood is being invaded by massive swarms of ants. Literally hundreds have gotten into my house. Judging by the number of exterminators ringing my doorbell, my neighbors are just as bad off. As a result, the bird population is gigantic. The sheer racket in the morning when they all start up their pre-dawn calls is enough to wake me up. It's obnoxious.
The amphibian population is also dramatically up. Frogs are in all the drainage ditches. The noise at night from tree frogs is worse than the cicadas once were.
For that matter, the small mammal population in my neighborhood has exploded in the past few years. I can look out my windows at almost any time of day and see a rabbit in my yard. Mice are everywhere. Raccoons have been getting into my house for years (until I poured some concrete to close gaps in my foundation). Last year I started seeing skunks again, after not seeing any for half a dozen prior years. My yard started getting invaded by moles two years ago, after a good eight years without any. The only typical suburban species I haven't been seeing yet is possums. A decade ago, they were getting squished on roads left and right. Haven't seen one, live or dead, in some years.
The burgeoning rabbit population has attracted several predator birds as well. I see a sparrow hawk on a regular basis during the day, and hear a great horned owl at night. And sometimes see him too, through my living room skylights, perched way up at the top of my honeylocust tree.
These things are cyclical. It's not just the cicadas that come and go. I've lived here for 15 years, and some years my entire back yard is alight with lightning bugs. Other years, there's a handful of them. There's a lot of extremely local factors that affect suburban species, and a lot of variance in those factors.
So you'd actually expect temperatures increasing by a few degrees to lead to more insects, not fewer.
You misunderstand. There are not fewer insects, but fewer species of insects. Their number has not diminished, their diversity has.
No. TFA says explicitly that there is 80% loss of total mass of insects caught, so regardless of breakdown by species, there is fewer insects in total.
Trapping seems like a non-productive and destructive technique. It's also highly localized and possibly 80% of bugs in those areas now recognise the traps or conversely, all the bugs lacking the IQ to avoid the traps have been caught and hence removed from the gene pool.
As a side note: of the few entomologists that I've met, they all catch and kill bugs. So the story is kind of like hearing hunters complain about how there is less game in an area. "We've been shooting deer here for years. But these past few years there seem to be fewer of them around."
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Why is it I imagine somewhere in Germany there is a concentration camp where they have sent the insects?
Of course they would deny it.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Because an alarming ecological story comes up, and without evidence or even a rational hypothetical cause, it's immediately blamed on climate change.
Most insects are herbivorous, so rely on plants for food. Global warming (increasing global temperatures, higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations, shorter winters) are conducive to plant growth. So you'd actually expect temperatures increasing by a few degrees to lead to more insects, not fewer.
WRONG!
Plant growth depends on the climate, of which temperature is just ONE SINGULAR FACET. If that increase in temperature is accompanied by a decrease in precipitation, the encroachment of an invasive species, the temps exceed the temperature range for the plants or any plants they may depend on, etc. then plants will NOT grow.
It is a completely false assumption that warmer temperatures are universally good for plants. Just like it's completely false to say that we can simply move all are farms north in a warmer world. It doesn't work that way.
~X~
Cell phones cause tunnel vision. Tunnel vision causes lack of thought. lack of thought causes global warming. Global warming causes insect increases. Insect increases increase predator food levels. Increased predator food levels increase populations counts of predators. Increased level of predators increases need for food from said predators. Increased need for food causes increase in ingestion. Increase in ingestion causes declination of populations of prey.
--
Decreased levels of food for prey decreases population counts of predators. Decrease of population of predators increases survival rate of prey. Increase in survival rate of prey leads to ^^ repeat. Over and over and over and over (repeat hundreds of millions of times).
Okay, okay, I had to throw global warming in as a cause just because it's popular these days. Also, the cause of global warming was mentioned as a humorous causation element. :)
Wait, wait. I should make mention of the Butterfly Effect, given the mention in the summary of the article.
Here in the US the only place there are bees are where people are actively putting effort into their hives. Still there are very few bees flying around when you approach the hives here in CA US.
I suspect pesticides and Chemtrails:
http://www.aircrap.org/
Is it too mean to say "You got what you asked for" to people?
Hey, the crop-harming insect count is reduced. "It has absolutely no effect on the food chain whatsoever, other than an increase of crops as food," says the chemical company.
Yes, getting what we asked for, for those that can see the chemtrails and admit that they are there. Meanwhile there are bots and programmed or paid shills in the forums calling people who see chemtrails, calling them crazy, absurd, etc. The only way we could have asked for chemtrails, without having knowledge or control (we are not supplying planes), is through some unknown karmic process, meaning our consciousness and life destiny somehow allows for it. Chemtrail deniers are going to slice and dice me on that one ;-)
You misunderstood, too.
Both have diminished, the numbers and the diversity.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
India's Famine Solution: We'll Eat Bugs... – Hopefully people in India like munching on crickets and other, um, delicacies. As the country's Food and Agriculture Organization warns a global famine will strike in 50 years, scientists are experimenting with an interesting source of alternative protein: bugs. "We are now doing a lot of work on edible insects," says a professor who has studied 29 different insect species included in the diet of the Bodo tribe in Assam. An FAO report notes bugs like caterpillars, termites, beetles, and grasshoppers have a high nutritional value that could match other kinds of meat, Quartz reports. Plus, insects are already part of traditional diets for two billion people worldwide, according to the report. So how do you feed a country like India with bugs? The answer is large-scale insect farms, FAO says, adding that such a diet would be environmentally friendly and cheaper than other proteins. As for the Bodos, "they do not have much inhibition about insects. It is an age-old tradition for them," the professor says. But one member of the country's Dalit population, which has also eaten bugs, notes they did so "out of compulsion ... If you ask them to go back to eating just that, they will tell you to go to hell." Maybe this will help: "Salty and sweet" preserves made from leftover silkworm pupae apparently taste like prawns, a scientist says. The Waco Tribune-Herald notes the trend toward creepy-crawly meals is also playing out in the US.
http://www.newser.com/story/18...
https://science.slashdot.org/s...
Your reasoned arguments and data don't line up with the common narrative that human-caused climate change causes all of the world's problems. Shame on you! I was going to blame it on second hand smoke, since that's a popular target of their wrath as well.
I suppose we should all be paralyzed with guilt for being born human, too.