Slashdot Mirror
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.
Neonicotinoids
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
They would have found the missing populations if they'd bothered to check my living room last Thursday.
So we ended up with the lose-lose of banning DDT and still ending up with the outcome she predicted.
Now what?
Umm, no we didn't. Neonicotinoids are almost certainly the cause of this, has nothing to do with DDT. DDT, which for some halfassed reason is championed by some as the holy grail of insect killers, a majick chemical that no insect will ever develop immunity to, because majick!
DDT was retired because birds were susceptible to it, laying thinner and thinner shells until they would crack under their own weight. Not sure how old you are, but when I was a kid in the early 1960's, it was so rare to see a hawk or other raptor, to the point that if we saw one while out in the car, we'd often stop because it was exciting. Hellava price to pay for a chemical that the insects will develop resistance to, just like weeds have developed resistance to Roundup.
Under some emergency stopgap circumstances, we can use DDT. Just not regularly. Don't want resistance built up to it. Just like old school penicillin, we're saving it. Because once those two are no longer effective, we are well and truly fucked. Just not in the fun way.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
glitch! wondered:
I agree that mosquitoes are despicable vermin. Most bugs have some purpose in the grand cycle, and I leave them alone so long as they stay outside where they belong. But I have to ask, just what the hell is the place of mosquitoes in the scheme?! Yes, if the price was agreeable, I would support the 100% elimination of this bug forever.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that mosquitoes are an important food source for insectivorous birds. Hummingbirds, in particular. And Gnatcatchers. Bats are also major predators of adult mosquitoes. Their larvae are an important food source for fish, dragonflies, crawdads, and smaller water-loving birds, as well.
Insectivorous birds are also eager predators of ticks, which are particularly important to them in winter, when many other insect adults are absent from temperate ecosystems.
Note that, having said all that, I myself hate both of them, along with every other kind of parasite you might care to name.
Fleas, for instance ...
Check out my novel.
Bats, purple martins and other insectivores get a vanishingly small amount of their calories from mosquitoes - less than 1% of the stomach contents of bats. Mosquitoes are quite small and therefore not very calorically rich. Unlike midges and gnats, they don’t really swarm in a way that would allow insectivores to get a whole bunch in one swoop, so generally mosquitoes are providing fewer calories than the expense required to fly at them. Bats, martins and the like mostly end up eating moths and midges. Some species of dragonfly are mosquitovores but, again, not as a large percentage of their caloric intake.
There are a handful of species that target mosquito larvae, which bunch up enough to be worth it. The aptly named mosquitofish is one such creature.
But the saving grace even among mosquitofish is that they don’t care what species of mosquito larva they eat - getting rid of the handful that target humans will leave space for the hundreds of other species that exist in the US (let alone the thousands worldwide). There are approximately 3,500 species of mosquito and only about 40 that target humans. Most of the human targeting mosquitoes are invasive species in nearly all of their range, brought by humans. (Aedes aegypti and the Asian Tiger mosquito, for instance, shouldn't be found in the Americas...)
Contrast that with the enormous chemical inputs we put into our lakes, streams and rivers in order to just control mosquitoes - we are surely inadvertently killing off other species of insects just trying to control mosquitoes. And when we drain a wetland because of mosquitoes, we impact far, far more species than even the worst case scenario of mosquito extinction.
There have been a number of discussions among ecologists and the consensus is that wiping out human-targeting mosquito species is fine. Even E.O. Wilson, the famed biologist and campaigner for biodiversity, wants to kill them all. (He’s actually slightly more cautious, but basically wouldn’t spill any tears over eradicating human-feeding insects.)