20 ms·

Study shows massive insect loss

• chiefalchemist 8y ago
  re: "Lister and Garcia attribute this crash to climate. In the same 40-year period as the arthropod crash, the average high temperature in the rain forest increased by 4 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperatures in the tropics stick to a narrow band. The invertebrates that live there, likewise, are adapted to these temperatures and fare poorly outside them; bugs cannot regulate their internal heat." No doubt, this is alarming. None the less, couldn't this suggest that the species in question simply moved to more suitable climate? That is, there is a difference between being killed off, and leaving an area that no meets their needs.
  • vlowther 8y ago
    The study cited in the paper was carried out on Puerto Rico. There isn't exactly another more suitable climate to migrate to.
    • irrational 8y ago
      Couldn't they just move down range from El Yunque to, say, the Morovis area?
  • sxates 8y ago
    Have any of these studies found places where insect populations have not declined at all?
    • rjsw 8y ago
      Midges in Northern Europe still seem to be thriving.
      • brohee 8y ago
        Not in Scotland https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/693445/dont-know-why-mystery-midge-populations-decline-Scotland https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/693445/dont-know-why-myste...
    • mixmastamyk 8y ago
      L.A. has gotten new-improved mosquitoes recently: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-mosquitoes-california-20180901-story.html http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes-mo...
  • DonaldFisk 8y ago
    A catastrophic decline has also been reported in Germany: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-three-quarters-total-insect-population-lost.html https://phys.org/news/2017-10-three-quarters-total-insect-po...
  • s_kilk 8y ago
    Like that time your pet dog went to live on a farm?
• _trampeltier 8y ago
  We talked this summer in a wonderfull warm night about it. Usually there are some kind of bugs around at nighttime. But there was not even one around. Our idea was, because of all light is LED now, or something like this.
  • DonaldFisk 8y ago
    Insects can see ultraviolet light but not red.
    • excalibur 8y ago
      I'm no expert on the matter, but that seems like a pretty sweeping generalization.
      • strainer 8y ago
        From a cursory review of results for "insect visual spectrum" it seems to check out - quite useful to know.
      • DonaldFisk 8y ago
        This site confirms it: https://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/insect-color-vision/ https://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/insect-color... I knew because ultraviolet light is used by entomologists to attract insects to traps during the night, e.g. moths: https://mississippientomologicalmuseum.org.msstate.edu/collecting.preparation.methods/Blacklight.traps.htm https://mississippientomologicalmuseum.org.msstate.edu/colle... This site gives the visual spectrum response of a species of beetle: http://cronodon.com/BioTech/Insect_Vision.html http://cronodon.com/BioTech/Insect_Vision.html
• 24gttghh 8y ago
  First the climate came for the coral reefs, and I did not speak up because I am not a marine invertebrate. Then, the climate came for the rest of the arthropods, and I did not speak up because I only have two legs. Then, the climate came for the fishes of the sea, and I did not speak up because I do not have gills. Then, the climate came for the plants, and I did not speak up because I am not a tree. Then, the climate came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me. These are serious warnings the planet is giving us and those in charge are more concerned about their nest egg than their grandchildren's future. Something's gotta give, and so far it's Earth's ecosystems.
  • cheez 8y ago
    Actually, the earth will kill us, the rich will survive in their underground bunkers, in a few hundred years, it'll clean itself off and we will rise again.
    • airstrike 8y ago
      Reminds me of Chrono Trigger... http://chrono.wikia.com/wiki/Antiquity http://chrono.wikia.com/wiki/Antiquity
  • jfk13 8y ago
    In this case it's probably more about the intensification of agricultural practices than directly about climate, but yes -- the warnings are dire.
  • devoply 8y ago
    As a species humans are pretty much worse than Hitler to everything other than their pets and other human beings. It's not the climate coming after anything, it's people they are after everything... Total control and consumption of everything in sight. Our economic system takes for granted everything that is free and is provided gratis by the environment. If we accounted for the cost to every little thing that is provided for free and paid dues to the entire environment, animals and so on, economic activity would be at a standstill and maybe we, and the environment we live in, would last a few more million years.
• carlesfe 8y ago
  Years ago, my family used to drive to our grandparents' village in hot, summer Friday nights. The windshield ended so pestered with dead bugs that the first task on Saturday morning was to drive the car to the river to clean it. I remember it vividly because it was so fun to wash the car with the cold river water. Last August I went stargazing with my wife. We chose a secluded area because it was far away from light pollution, a few hours away from the capital. We watched the Perseids for a couple of hours in the middle of a field. We had no lights on, but being CO2-emitting mammals, no flying insect bothered us. We had anti-mosquito spray ready but we didn't need to use it. There were a few ants but that's it. Afterwards, I drove an hour and a half at 2am and only a few bugs died on my windshield. I didn't even need to use the wipers the next morning. I hate mosquitoes as much as everybody else, but something has been happening to insects in the last 20 years. As a human it's comfortable but I'm honestly a bit afraid for the environment. And studies like this don't paint a positive picture.
  • powvans 8y ago
    I have similar memories from my childhood in the 80's. We lived in Savannah and would make the trek to North Georgia several times a year to visit my mom's family. I can remember the headlights illuminating a sea of bugs like a light snow and the bigger ones popping loudly on the windshield from time to time. Having a full reservoir of wiper fluid was crucial and my dad would let me scrub the windshield whenever we stopped for gas. I drive down to the Georgia coast or down to the gulf through Lower Alabama a least a couple times every year and it's rare to have anything of real size burst on the windshield.
    • jacobush 8y ago
      Same thing in Sweden, summer nights, 80s. Today, I never have that problem, not even during this humid, record hot summer.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • akiselev 8y ago
    It's such a minor thing when it comes to our day to day but becomes truly terrifying when you put it all together and look at the big picture. I've noticed the same thing about wild-life in general whenever I visit my favorite places from childhood - whether it's the reefs around Australia, the tide pools in Baja, or the inland empire desert I grew up in. Looking at actual research just makes it worse: a third of microorganisms in the upper marine layer have died off from pollution, almost all species considered keystone predators are gone or going extinct, and the climate is jumping off a cliff. At first I thought it was an effect of aging (changes in nostalgia and awareness) but after moving back to one of the cities I lived in and talking to the local bird watching society, it seems to be happening everywhere on massive scales. And so, slowly, we boil.
• coldnose 8y ago
  Does anyone else find spicing up ordinary words with new cognates amusing? Super-researchers are ultraconcerned about hyperalarming insect megaloss.
  • traek 8y ago
    Prefixes, not cognates.
    • jawns 8y ago
      One of the examples that coldnose offers has a suffix appended to it, so I think you're incorrect, too. Maybe affixes? By the way, yours is an example of Muphry's law. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law And because I'm correcting your incorrect correction, I have a feeling that I've gotten something wrong, too.
      • kbrackbill 8y ago
        Which one is a suffix? super- hyper- ultra- mega- are all prefixes
      • throwaway2048 8y ago
        the usual term is superlatives for intensifiers like that.
    • YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
      Super-pedantic.
      • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
        Megadantic
  • DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
    It is literally what I love about the English language. You can easily generate new words that are easily understood. In the same thought, it's completely unnecessary.
• 14 8y ago
  My dad claims that the bugs come and go in cycles and says he has seen so several times over his life. He believes that we are just in a period of low bug population and that at any time there could and will be a population explosion. Personally I am not so optimistic. My dad moved around multiple times over his life and I would suspect different areas would naturally have varying bug densities and that is why he felt they went in cycles. Because for myself I DO notice the decline in bugs and articles like these do scare me for the sake of humanity.
  • bsaul 8y ago
    For what it's worth, i noticed the same bug-on-windshield difference between the 80s and now in France. So, whatever it is, it crossed the Atlantic ocean.
  • fzeroracer 8y ago
    I'm starting to feel like this is the common trend when you bring up arguments of potentially how disastrous our effects on the environment have been. Bugs? They come and go in cycles. Climate? Again, cycles. I suppose next we'll see claims that the rising ocean is just the cycle of the ocean and it'll fall back down any day now.
    • Double_a_92 8y ago
      > the rising ocean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide /s
    • sosense 8y ago
      But the oceans have been rising for over 1000 years at the same rate, and things like insect population and climate are cyclical.
    • erikpukinskis 8y ago
      It’s the perfect response because it’s technically correct. We’re not going anywhere the Earth hasn’t already been. It’s just a question of whether we’ll like the Cretaceous.
  • 8y ago
• Havoc 8y ago
  I'd be more inclined to blame neonicotinoid pesticides than change in temperature, but seems plausible I guess.
  • linuxftw 8y ago
    Large agriculture has been an ecological disaster for decades. Pesticides, fertilizer runoff, heavy usage of herbicides, water mismanagement and foolish introductions of non-native species to counteract invasive pests making situations worse. Pollution, pollution, pollution. Is climate change making some kind of impact? Possibly. But it pales in comparison with reckless use of poisons and chemicals.
    • dTal 8y ago
      TFA is about a roughly 80% drop in biomass in a pristine, protected tropical rainforest, in a country where pesticide use has dropped 80 percent.
      • tremon 8y ago
        How about delayed effects? I can't read the article, but does the article mention what the natural decay rate of these pesticides is?
        • AstralStorm 8y ago
          Here is the linked study: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/10/09/1722477115 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/10/09/1722477115
        • linuxftw 8y ago
          It doesn't make note of any specific pesticides or actual amounts of pesticides applied, source material only references 'hectacres subject to pesticide application' with no direct reference to the data source (only a link to a USGOV site where the data allegedly was derived). The report also makes the claim: "Most pesticides have half-lives measured in days, not decades (60)" Reference 60 links to [1]. Nowhere on that page does it make any claims about 'most' pesticides, nor does the study attempt to link any type of pesticide to that the ones reported there. Clearly, the impact of pesticides was dismissed without any real effort to verify the impact of pesticides. [1]: http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/half-life.html http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/half-life.html
• bitL 8y ago
  This summer was very atypical; in previous years my house was getting all kinds of insects visiting it during the day, this year very few. Also, there were too many bees I found lying dead on the floor - I had to pick one almost every day - something is definitely up.
• cmpaul 8y ago
  > The invertebrates that live there, likewise, are adapted to these temperatures and fare poorly outside them; bugs cannot regulate their internal heat. This makes me think that the insects which do survive will be better adapted to the higher temperatures. Hopefully the change is slow enough they have time to adapt. And this is nothing to say about the impact of that adaptation time on other species...
  • GlenTheMachine 8y ago
    Problem is the temperature keeps changing (upwards). If it was a step input, then you might see a sudden die-off and then a ramp back up. But the temperature change is, to first order, a ramp input.
    • Dylan16807 8y ago
      Problem? Slow ramps are the ideal way to drive adaptation. That's why finishing a course of antibiotics is so important.
      • GlenTheMachine 8y ago
        This isn't slow, by evolutionary standards. The bugs are trying to adapt to a changing, rapidly increasing temperature.
        • Dylan16807 8y ago
          I'm willing to bet that the necessary genes already exist in the population, since the bugs already handle daily temperature swings that are much larger than the increases from climate change. Given that, a few dozen generations is plenty. And insect generations are for the most part quite short.
          • GlenTheMachine 8y ago
            Then why are the insects all dying? If this is true, the populations should be rebounding. They aren't.
• jayalpha 8y ago
  Yes. Has been in the news since a few years. More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Connected? Glyphosate perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/18/1803880115 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/18/1803880115
• tannhaeuser 8y ago
  It probably won't save the world, but we developers sure could do more to save energy and not requiring ridiculous hardware resources for what seems like merely gradual improvements over the 90s, with all the chemicals for processing and in batteries, and with all the waste. By this time, we could've achieved long-lived solar-powered mobiles with B/W LCDs. I remember text processing software being pitched as paper-saving devices.
  • EGreg 8y ago
    You mean like Proof of Work mining?
    • zanny 8y ago
      I a more generalist sense just things like using Electron vs native toolkits matter. The desktop Discord app is going to use substantially more power to run day to day than if it were a native code app that just used something like C++, and across millions of gamers for hours a night every night those resource requirements and power demands add up. It isn't always just "average hardware is faster so use more inefficient frameworks to lower time to market". Using those shortcuts to ship makes sense, but it should then be a long term goal to reel in those expensive abstractions once you can start counting the amount of power your software is using on a regular basis by whole power plants required to keep your code running on a daily basis.
      • kankroc 8y ago
        Presenting "not using Electron" as a significant way to reduce our impact on the environment has to be the most HN thing I ever read.
        • goatlover 8y ago
          Javascript is ruining the environment. Everyone should switch to Rust, and compile all apps to web assembly. Also, blockchain.
• travisoneill1 8y ago
  Is there a chance that there is an issue with the methodology and that numbers are wrong? I would have thought this type of loss would cause very obvious and catastrophic changes higher up the food chain.
  • vajrabum 8y ago
    And yes, the article makes the point that insectivores are disappearing as well with presumably a knock on though less direct effect on higher level predators.
  • randcraw 8y ago
    I would think so too. But most species are capable of switching among multiple food sources, to compensate for lean times. I think this allows those critters that are already living to stay alive. But it probably limits their ability to reproduce, since their young are unlikely to be as flexible in finding food. I suspect the impact of a long-term change in foodstuffs will take a while to fully propagate.
• kpil 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is more related to a rather radical shift to a more industrialised agriculture the recent 40 years. Grazing land and more importantly meadows are simply gone. According to Wikipedia, England and Wales have lost about 97% of their hay meadows. Meadows are artificial, but they increase the biodiversity significantly. Neonicotinoids are probably also to blame. Climate change must be negligible in comparison, but it seems that everything can be blamed on climate change. War in Syria for instance.
  • dTal 8y ago
    The article specifically addresses and refutes this: >Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico... [it] remains the only tropical rain forest in the National Forest system >Lister pointed out that, since 1969, pesticide use has fallen more than 80 percent in Puerto Rico The article also provides several - reputable, scientific - references that demonstrate a predicted loss of insects in tropical regions from thermal pressure.
    • linuxftw 8y ago
      >>Lister pointed out that, since 1969, pesticide use has fallen more than 80 percent in Puerto Rico The article does make this claim, but it doesn't appear to back it up in any way. Additionally, nothing is said about the type of pesticide. If I use a pesticide that is 10x stronger by weight than what was available in 1969 and possibly doesn't need to be applied as often, then we're not comparing apples to apples. Additionally, it's not mentioned what is meant by 'pesticide' Is that just insecticide or herbicide? Perhaps the application of herbicide (roundup) has increased, killing off native food-stuffs and poisoning the insects that eat them.
      • AstralStorm 8y ago
        You should read the linked studies before posting, they answer all these questions.
        • 8y ago
• shironineja__ 8y ago
  Flying insects are generally attracted to light. Our cities and vehicles generate light particularly during the night drawing them away from more-ideal habitat and often to their death on windshields. Now it is a fair point that this wouldn’t matter if there were thousands or even a few million vehicles but consider there are over 1.015B vehicles active on the road today and billions of us living in brightly lit cities. Why does it come as a surprise that we are bleeding this planet dry? Stop having kids and consider dying early.
  • th3byrdm4n 8y ago
    What a horrible way to end a post. Try - always be mindful and intentional with your actions and the actions of those around you. Work hard towards building a better world.
    • shironineja__ 8y ago
      I am. Are you?
      • saana 8y ago
        Kill yourself tonight if you're so keen on dying early. Do us all a favour.
        • sctb 8y ago
          We've banned this account.
• christophilus 8y ago
  My wife and I leave large portions of our lawn untended. We seed ours with flowering native plants and herbs. We had fireflies and butterflies and bees galore this year— noticeably more than any of our neighbors. It’s not much, but it’s something.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • phs318u 8y ago
    Same. We have what in some parts of the world would be called a "country garden". A mix of flowering natives and imports. We have bugs (especially bees) galore. Have now taken to leaving out suitable fruit scraps in the garden and water as well, and have been attracting small and large (raven) birds too.
  • njarboe 8y ago
    After the three year California drought and not watering the lawn much during it, I just let the grass and wild flowers grow up without mowing the last few years. Lots of different kind of plants, many bees, etc. Pretty cool, although some people comment on how we have let the yard go. I wish I could do a controlled burn at the start of the rainy season. On the other hand, I recently learned what a carpenter bee is and what they can do to exposed wood structures. This year was the first time I had them boring into the wooden eves of our house. I have mixed feelings when I see them now.
    • saiya-jin 8y ago
      What exactly do you mean by controlled burn? If it is what I think it is, you will kill many insects that call that lawn their home. Not really good for anything (plus the risk of burning down the neighborhood)
      • njarboe 8y ago
        Of course burning my front lawn would never be allowed and I understand the reasons for that but ever since humans arrived (15,000 years or so ago) California grasslands would burn quite often. The "native" ecosystem was adapted to it and I think it would be fun to see what a few years of buring would do to the biological diversity of my little bit of grassland.
• jelliclesfarm 8y ago
  I really like all the innovations with indoor farming. But I have always thought that it’s missing a huge chunk of the bigger picture. The rest of the eco system and habitat. Traditional farming(as we know it) is not that close to nature. It’s is essentially an open air factory for food...largely aided by chemicals and a lot of brute horse power. In all this, nature and it’s balancing effects are lost.
• newnewpdro 8y ago
  Similar to what others have said here, I've noticed a marked decline in dead bugs on my vehicle following cross-country road trips over the last 10-15 years. I never have to clean my windshield of dead bugs anymore. The first time I visited the midwest after moving to CA, something like 10 years ago now, via i80, the front of my car was completely covered with insects to the point you could barely see the paint. Every successive year I made that same trip the dead bugs lessened until there was simply no need at all to even clean my car upon arrival. Things are changing, there's no doubt about it. I just hope the species evolving to thrive in the emerging conditions are as easy to cohabitate with as the ones going extinct. Other than a small subset like mosquitoes, wasps, ticks, and some spiders, insects have been rather hospitable to us. Maybe not so much in the future.
• kingkawn 8y ago
  We are killing everything the way we’re living. Either we change or we too die.
• monktastic1 8y ago
  > The authors of a 2017 study of vanished flying insects in Germany suggested other possible culprits, including pesticides and habitat loss. Arthropods around the globe also have to contend with pathogens and invasive species. “It’s bewildering, and I’m scared to death that it’s actually death by a thousand cuts,” Wagner said. “One of the scariest parts about it is that we don’t have an obvious smoking gun here.” I feel this is a good place to share a quote from a favorite author (Charles Eisenstein). His philosophy might be too New-Agey for some (the skeptics society at Google even protested his visit), but I think there's more than a little something to it: "Clear-cutting aside, the decline of one after another species of trees all over the world is something of a mystery to scientists: in each case, there seems to be a different proximate culprit— a beetle, a fungus, etc. But why have they become susceptible? Acid rain leaching free aluminum from soil silicates? Ground-level ozone damaging leaves? Drought stress caused by deforestation elsewhere? Heat stress due to climate change? Understory damage due to deer overpopulation due to predator extermination? Exogenous insect species? Insect population surges due to the decline of certain bird species? Or is it all of the above? Perhaps underneath all of these vectors of forest decline and climate instability is a more general principle that is inescapable. Everything I have mentioned stems from a kind of derangement in our own society. All come from the perception of separation from nature and from each other, upon which all our systems of money, technology, industry, and so forth are built. Each of these projects itself onto our own psyches as well. The ideology of control says that if we can only identify the “cause,” we can control climate change. Fine, but what if the cause is everything? Economy, politics, emissions, agriculture, medicine … all the way to religion, psychology, our basic stories through which we apprehend the world? We face then the futility of control and the necessity for transformation. ... Thus I say that our revolution must go all the way to the bottom, all the way down to our basic understanding of self and world. We will not survive as a species through more of the same: better breeds of corn, better pesticides, the extension of control to the genetic and molecular level. We need to enter a fundamentally different story. That is why an activist will inevitably find herself working on the level of story. She will find that in addition to addressing immediate needs, even the most practical, hands-on actions are telling a story. They come from and contribute to a new Story of the World. "
  • TangoTrotFox 8y ago
• jungletime 8y ago
  Can confirm, its happening in Canada too. When I was a child, the car windshield used to get covered with bugs, but its not happening anymore. Drastic change. Even driving up north, where you would expect very little human induced influence. Where have all the bugs gone? even windows has fewer
• dvh 8y ago
  I'm fishing quite a lot, few years ago if I reeled cloth, old sock, or plastic bag from river bottom it was full of tiny shrimps and other tiny insects. When I reel it now it's just empty. Also I see significantly less chubs.
• oldandtired 8y ago
  Interesting. The insects must be migrating to Australia. I have lived in the same location now for 20 years. In that time, I have seen cycles in the populations of both insects and birds. This years has been one of the peaks for birds. So many different species, and some of them are much larger than I have seen in a number of years - some of them are up to twice the normal size. Flies again have increased, but mosquitoes are down. Bees have been out and about as the amount of flowers being pollinated and fruit starting to appear is large this year. It seems to be an increase over last year. Plenty of spiders and earwigs, though down on snails (as yet). The chooks are chasing lots of insects about for a feed. There are plenty of aphids on the roses - too many in fact - may not get any roses this year. Mind you this is Spring and we may see a different change later as we get to summer. We are expecting a bad fire season, though doesn't appear to be like it was when we had the Black Saturday bushfires a decade ago. I have only just stopped running the fire at night because it has still been too cold to not do so.
• CptFribble 8y ago
  At what point does the cost of continuing the status quo outweigh changing it? How do you even measure something like that, when the people in charge of making changes won't live to see them? I think a major problem humanity has, among many others, is the way we assign leadership roles. Leadership of major institutions should be balanced not just among gender, but also among age. Every government should include decision makers under 40. When we don't have rules for this, we wind up with the current situation: the average Representative is 57, the average Senator is 61. [1] This might seem trite or pointless to many, but I really think we need decision-makers who will have to live with the longer-term consequences of their decisions. Mitch McConnell, the current majority leader in the Senate and one of the most powerful people in Congress, is 76. When the UN says we have 12 years to change our ways or suffer possibly world-ending consequences, how much does that matter to a 76-year old? I think it's pretty well established at this point that we can't rely on our leaders to think or act empathetically, or make decisions that matter beyond their party and the next re-election. We need to figure out a way to build future-focused thinking into our governance. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do it. [1]" https://www.quorum.us/data-driven-insights/the-115th-congress-is-among-the-oldest-in-history/175/ https://www.quorum.us/data-driven-insights/the-115th-congres...
  • saiya-jin 8y ago
    You cant' expect some age limits will anyhow fix this. Plenty of amoral hawkish young people out there. In same vein, older people tend to have more clear view on whats really important in life, it ain't got anything to do with fast cars, flashy fashion or being popular on instagram. If they have kids and grandkids, they will be at least as concerned as younger should be.
  • ainiriand 8y ago
    Take a look at the Irish Citizen Assembly which predates on your idea. The last decision was making abortion legal once and for all. https://www.citizensassembly.ie/en/ https://www.citizensassembly.ie/en/
  • undersuit 8y ago
    I don't see how making us have more diverse set of leaders will make things better. There are plenty of people under 40 I don't want making decisions and there are plenty of people over 40 I do want making decisions. Diversity isn't going to make good leaders, it's going to give us diverse leaders.
• latchkey 8y ago
  Living in Vietnam, there is a massive population of swallows. They are prized for the nests they make [1] and people build whole multi-story windowless buildings just to house them [2]. I've seen these buildings all over. At dusk you see them flying around clearly eating up all the mosquitos and bugs in the air. No absolute proof, but I'm pretty sure this is why there are so few mosquitos and flying bugs here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_bird%27s_nest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_bird%27s_nest [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_bird%27s_nest#/media/File:Nestinghouse_003.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_bird%27s_nest#/media/Fi...
• epynonymous 8y ago
  that's because all the mosquitos are now in china...
• pvaldes 8y ago
  Cars, Pesticides, and habitat loss. There is nowadays also a general phobia and fear towards nature in general. Millions of people (driven by decades of publicity) had assumed that a backyard with tall grasses is a sort of unforgivable sin. They run compulsively towards their fancy lawnmower (and their magic products against each single plague known in the continent) each weekend. But if you loose the grip and let a small space of lawn alone (Maybe cutting it three times a year instead 30 times a year). The thing will bloom and attract thousands of species of invertebrates including many butterflies and rare beetles. Is a very satisfying change. Small backyard ponds give also a big life boost.
• vixen99 8y ago
  This year about half the apples in our garden were devoured by insect and microbial predators. You could say this is the natural condition for producing organic food. The pristine ones marketed for sale are there courtesy of the 2.8 million tons of pesticide (2009. Is it more or less now?) used to fend off such attacks. Have we properly assessed the true cost of our food? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2946087/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2946087/
• randcraw 8y ago
  Growing up in the 1960s, I remember car windshields being just covered with dead bugs in summer, especially after highway trips. Thinking back, I haven't seen this happen since 1990, at latest. Putting my zoologist hat on, arthropods make up the largest fraction of biomass of any other large animal group (phylum). The next largest, fish, heavily depend on arthropoda for food. As do small birds, and as it happens the worldwide loss of birds is also being called 'catastrophic', at about 40%. That makes me wonder, how much fish have we've also lost? And what's next? https://e360.yale.edu/digest/forty-percent-of-the-worlds-bird-populations-are-in-decline-new-study-finds https://e360.yale.edu/digest/forty-percent-of-the-worlds-bir... When the world's population of insects drops 50% to 80% in only 40 years, this is a VERY BIG problem.