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Flying Insects Have Been Disappearing Over the Past Few Decades, Study Shows (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists. Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is "on course for ecological Armageddon," with profound impacts on human society. The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said. The cause of the huge decline is as yet unclear, although the destruction of wild areas and widespread use of pesticides are the most likely factors and climate change may play a role. The scientists were able to rule out weather and changes to landscape in the reserves as causes, but data on pesticide levels has not been collected. The research, published in the journal Plos One, is based on the work of dozens of amateur entomologists across Germany who began using strictly standardized ways of collecting insects in 1989.
Fuck bugs.
Too bad the reduction in bees hasn't translated to a reduction of mosquitoes.
I would gladly destroy every bee on earth if I could sit outside without spraying a ton of chemicals on myself to prevent mosquito bites carrying disease.
Nuke em all, and let the god of flying bastards sort it out.
Neonicotinoids
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Ooh... the global warming is killing the insect.
There are fucking mosquitoes all summer long, wasps everywhere, flies, box elder bugs, gnats, and those little fruit flies always get in my house.
Used to drive 150 mph all the time. I'd clean the windscreen every day. Today, I drive 150 mph all the time. I NEVER clean the windscreen!
The TSA!
Quite the coincidence isn't it?
They would have found the missing populations if they'd bothered to check my living room last Thursday.
copyright t. swell
Bugs!
they counted them,
you know;
took 'em ten years, using
airplanes
with nets and special
radar.
that's what they do;
scientists
from Israel, China and
Britain.
count bugs.
short ones tall ones big ones
small ones
tasty or otherwise, bugs
dominate.
they surround us, they live
on & in us
they crawl, squirm, hop
and fly
by day, by night, while
you sleep...
bugs
are bigger than we -
total weight greater than
all humanity.
7 trillion bugs fly over
your head
every year; spring
and fall;
far above your head
up to a mile
dropping tiny deposits
on your head
moving in wind at up to
35 M.P.H.
7 trillion bugs weigh
6,400 tons.
as much as, try to
imagine,
1,272 elephants
flying over your house
every year.
if you could eat only half
those bugs
you would be well fed.
but birds & bats would be
deprived.
Bugs!
...omphaloskepsis often...
I grow passiflora, for example, to host Gulf Fritallaries, but they disappeared for about five years. Why? They came back this year, so that's hopeful.
I also grow other local flowers to encourage insects.
Did they even consider that 25 years ago they had an unusually high density of insects and now we are back to normal? I think they did not!
As anybody knows who isn't so stupid they'd drown from looking up if they went out in the rain, climate and weather are not the same thing.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I've read that the popularity of housecats creates tremendous predation of small animals in urban areas. I wonder if the prevalence of birdfeeders creates similar booms of insectivores.
insect population in Germany only was studied
might be happening elsewhere, but let's not go full alarmist yet eh?
Perhaps insects are on the decline in Germany. Try surveying the US. I see more and more of them. We now have an unprecedented inundation of box elder bugs in the northeast.
so they don't
So we ended up with the lose-lose of banning DDT and still ending up with the outcome she predicted.
Now what?
I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.
I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.
Shel Silverstein
It’s both.
No decline in insects anywhere I have spent much time.
You probably spend most of your time in recreational areas, away from farms that cover most of the country. The government spreads insect catching devices across the agricultural zones, so they see what is there (in California, they are serious about this especially after medfly).
A reduction of pollinating insects in some agriculture won't matter. In others it just means they'll need to rent more honey bees (and don't talk about honey bees dying off: their population is stable).
still no shortage.
We're good for another 4 billion people. Then the population will balance out and mother nature will live harmoniously with our industrial farms and floating plastic continents and if you all know what's good for you...lots more coal power plants...god bless 'em.
I swat one every few days or so.
Look at your car windshield if you want to see where a big chunk of them are going. I've lived in areas where it sounded like rain at night, there were so many bugs being smashed as I drove down the road.
He works for a chemical company. A few decades ago on one fine, hot summer day he and a friend were out there (for more than a week) with a few crickets, an air hose, and a windshield or fifty.
He and a friend spend their time having fun blasting crickets from the hose onto the windshields, each treated with a different mixture to test, thus imitating a car driving thru a (?cricket storm? It's the same idea as having a teeny tiny mouse process 10,000 gallons of aspartame so see what happens. The mouse finally dies in the bathroom of boredom I think.)
It was fun for the first 30 minutes or so, I hear. They started cracking jokes and whistling. After a few days they started watching "The Fly" with Vincent Price on a TV they bought. On Repeat.
One fine day they put pictures of their boss behind some of the windshields. Their accuracy and attention span greatly improved that day.
Nowdays he just sits in the corner and chirps slightly. (I exaggerate. He actually stomps on every cricket he sees, even if it's on the ceiling -- he's a pretty good shot with a shoe.)
So, kids, you've a choice between depressing old Emily Dickinson and weird e eEEEEE! Cummings or STEM research with bugs and fire and electricity. Personally, I'd stay in the theoretical physics side of things -- where no one expects understandable results anyway.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
You can read about
https://www.amazon.com/Sixth-Extinction-Unnatural-History/dp/0805092994
And why we are truly screwed- the author of this book chose to have 3 children, one more than the sustainable number of 2, thereby adding to the very mass extinction being written about.
It's the fucking birds.
We need more cats!
I was sitting outside a few days ago and thinking about how bugs aren't nearly as bad as they used to be. Just sitting there drinking a glass of iced tea enjoying a beautiful day, and nothing buzzing my head. No gnats flying in my ears, no flies trying to light on my glass. I thought maybe it was just me but the last 2 or 3 years I had wondered why bugs weren't so bad anymore. Now this makes me wonder, are they really dying off?
Most ancient civilizations disappeared because they totally depleted their immediate environment of all things needed to live. Nowadays our immediate environment is the whole planet. We're doomed.
-- Cheers!
For simple minded: maybe they flew away, far away, somewhere else. Idiots razor.
Since flying bugs are attracted towards moonlight, they fly towards electricity-lit cities which is not their natural environment. They get exterminated by various human processes (pest control, building cleaning, general public cleanliness leading to loss of food source, no vegitation, concretization/taring/mulch of surfaces reducing burrows etc) leading to decreased populations.
Does it ever seem like no matter what we do, it's wrong? From so many directions our impending doom approaches.. from nuclear war, climate change, and other ecological disasters, like this and bee colony collapse.
Maybe we should all watch more of Primitive Technology on Youtube, seems like we're going to have to learn how to live like that again sometime sooner than expected, if at all.
The cause of the huge decline is as yet unclear, although [...] climate change may play a role. The scientists were able to rule out weather
No. If you've ruled out weather, you've ruled out climate. Climate is just an average of the weather. A better name for climate would be Weather Statistics.
Seventy plus posts when I came here, of which about 3 are intelligent comments buried in the crap, a third are the usual asides and non sequiturs and jokes, the rest are trolls, attempts to derail any discussion, et.c. Why does anyone bother?
Of course we have a huge drop in insect populations. What did you expect was going to happen?
One of the genetic modifications done to corn in 1995 was the introduction of genes from bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). These genes make plants themselves produce toxic crystals which destroy insect guts. Thus, farms don't have to spray insecticide anymore, the plants themselves ARE insecticide.
Bugs fly to cities and die.
Regardless, while the downward trend is clear, the 75% figure is bullshit. There was 50% variation over the first two years, and these major changes continue over time. The overall fall is still dramatic, just less than what is stated.
now this.
You must be invited to sooo many parties.
As anybody knows who isn't so stupid they'd drown from looking up if they went out in the rain, climate and weather are not the same thing.
Well, that''s a relief. I was concerned that with the climate changing, weather patterns might not stay the same from year to year.
Get out of your mom's basement.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
PESTICIDES
PESTICIDES
You can't drop tons of chemicals engineered to kill insects into a biosystem, and NOT expect it to kill insects.
- Jason
But you don't see anybody raising the alarm over the disappearing honkey population
Insects don't have guns to go on a rampage ^w^w^w^w defend themselves with.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
OK, I'm sorry, but I have serious problems extrapolating from one highly industrialized country in the middle of a highly industrialized continent to the entire world. The results they found in Germany are a basis to justify funding to see if the same holds true in the rest of the world, but not a very solid basis to draw a conclusion about what is happening in the rest of the world.
Personally, I am somewhat skeptical of their conclusions because the number of bats and insectivorous birds which I see are significantly higher than when I was a child. While that is anecdotal evidence, I also remember reading a year or two ago about a significant drop in the number of bats as a result of disease...in the article it mentioned that this was devastating because bat populations were finally returning to what was considered near optimal after a low in the late 60s, early 70s.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Human population is stabilizing. If anything it's declining in the developed world with birth rates around 1.8 per couple. Overpopulation turned out not to be a thing.
As the population declines the strain on the planet combined with our need to get resources out of it will drop. The only question is if we can keep this trend up. To be honest, it comes down to whether we can mellow our religion. That's the main driving force to increase population and oppose birth control. Specifically the notion that God made the earth for us to exploit and so there won't be any consequences if we do so. That and most religion's concepts around 'fornication' and birth control.
Mellow out religious zealots and you'll gradually see a developed world where the only real problem will be under population. I'm not sure if that'll happen or not. On the one hand we've had a resurgence in America as our right wing leans heavily on religion to get voters to the polls but on the other hand statistics show that mellowing out is happening. I'll be dead before it's a problem though.
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Germany is one of the most intensively human modified environments in the world. The current goal of the Germans is to have 2% of their country be wilderness area by 2020 (it's currently 0.5%).
Doing a wildlife study of Germany and extrapolating globally from that is fairly ridiculous. It might apply to a few other countries in Europe and maybe New Jersey in the US, but otherwise is useless.
Insects are dependent on the plants as well, and the GMOs are poison to them.
GMOs need to be immediately outlawed; they never should have been implemented in the first place.
In this day and age where everybody is concerned about climate change, GMOs contribute to that change, even if the insects are just fine with it.
It's yet another reason why I will never pay a carbon tax.
Here me out on this. DDT was once used to control insects, but it also killed birds and soften the shells of the eggs, killing the next generation of birds too. Inserts lost many of their predators. I have seen more Birds and Birds of prey (which eat the birds that eat the insects) Could it be that we are seeing the ecosystem resetting itself. With DDT, lots of inserct and Bird deaths, DDT outlawed, insects recover right away and then some lacking predators, birds take several generations to recover. Birds recover and and Flying insect populations drops.
"gathered in nature reserves across Germany"
Couldn't the fact that it's in a nature reserve affect the outcome?
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This must not include: flies, gnats, wasps, and mosquitoes. There are as many of them as ever in the high desert abutting the high elevation mountain forests and lakes where I live.
maybe it is funny at this moment but when in the food chain will left only us, then it won't be anymore
for the Northeast, especially Maine and Massachusetts. We're not bug scientists, but a lot of us noticed that something's been wrong for a few years.
The states don't appear to be interested in funding any studies though. On guy actually said - I kid you not - if we don't study it, it doesn't exist.
I saw an article about this somewhere else recently, saying that here in the UK you just don't get the same amount of dead insects on your windscreen in the summer as you used to, although that was more anecdotal than evidence-based..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it