The world has lost more than one quarter of its land-dwelling insects in the past 30 years, according to researchers whose big picture study of global bug decline paints a disturbing but more nuanced problem than earlier research. From bees and other pollinators crucial to the world’s food supply to
1 / 4Insect DeclineThis undated photo provided by Michael Thomas in April 2020 shows a clouded sulphur butterfly in Cromwell, Conn. In an April 2020 interview, Ann Swengel, a citizen scientist tracking butterflies for more than 30 years, recalled that a few decades ago she would drive around Wisconsin “look out in a field and you’d see all these Sulphur butterflies around. I can’t think of the last time that I’ve seen that.
“The decline across insect orders on land is jaw dropping,” said Michigan State University butterfly expert Nick Haddad, who wasn’t part of the study. “Ongoing decline on land at this rate will be catastrophic for ecological systems and for humans. Insects are pollinators, natural enemies of pests, decomposers and besides that, are critical to functioning of all Earth’s ecosystems.”
University of Delaware entomologist Douglas Tallamy, who wasn’t part of the study, said he would drive through the Midwest where there were supposed to be lots of butterflies and other insects but would see only corn and soybeans in an insect desert. The study detailed quite different losses from place to place and from decade to decade. That tells scientists that “we’re not looking for a single stressor or we’re not looking a global phenomenon that is stressing insects in the same way,” said University of Connecticut insect expert David Wagner, who wasn’t part of the study. What’s happening, he said, is “absolutely intolerable.”
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