6 ms·

The insect apocalypse is not here but there are reasons for concern

81 points by jkuria 8y ago

dmix 8y ago
> Using computer models of ecosystems, Nigel Stork of Griffith University, Queensland, estimates there are 5.5m species of insect and 6.8m of terrestrial arthropods (the wider category that includes spiders and crustaceans). That implies over 80% of insects remain undiscovered. Does anyone know how this works? Is it measuring the DNA and compares with known variations and using other well-known species as a reference model to do a projection?
- hydrox24 8y ago
  I don't, but the abstract of the paper he published may offer some insight if you understand the key words: > In the last decade, new methods of estimating global species richness have been developed and existing ones improved through the use of more appropriate statistical tools and new data. Taking the mean of most of these new estimates indicates that globally there are approximately 1.5 million, 5.5 million, and 7 million species of beetles, insects, and terrestrial arthropods, respectively. Previous estimates of 30 million species or more based on the host specificity of insects to plants now seem extremely unlikely. With 1 million insect species named, this suggests that 80% remain to be discovered and that a greater focus should be placed on less-studied taxa such as many families of Coleoptera, Diptera, and Hymenoptera and on poorly sampled parts of the world. DNA tools have revealed many new species in taxonomically intractable groups, but unbiased studies of previously well-researched insect faunas indicate that 1–2% of species may be truly cryptic. Stork. "How Many Species of Insects and Other Terrestrial Arthropods Are There on Earth?". Annual Review of Entomology. 2018. doi: http://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ento-020117-043348 http://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ento-020117-043348 You could always email him to find out: nigel.stork (at) griffith.edu.au
SrslyJosh 8y ago
TL;DR: There are no studies of insect life in Countries A, B, and C, so no need to worry about a huge decline in biomass in the US and Europe! ಠ_ಠ
- FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
  It’s what I believed at 3 years old: if I can’t see it it doesn’t exist and can’t see me!
ArtDev 8y ago
The insect decline is shocking and will have drastic impacts we can only predict
patientplatypus 8y ago
The biggest issue is that the insects are dying because of pesticides and fertilizers. And it's getting worse: “The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification,” Sánchez-Bayo said. “That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.” He said the demise of insects appears to have started at the dawn of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last two decades. The 2.5% rate of annual loss over the last 25-30 years is “shocking”, Sánchez-Bayo told the Guardian: “It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none.” Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeti... So...either we stop using intensive agg practices and our global food production goes down and we starve, or we kill all the bugs and the food web collapses. I'm predicting between this, plastic, massive garbage problems and climate change we're most likely going to have mass migration, war, disease and famine outbreaks in the next twenty years. Like a billion+ dead outbreaks. As far as I can see the entire industrial revolution has been a giant externality on nature. It saddens me that me and everyone around me will have to live through this.
- SrslyJosh 8y ago
  > So...either we stop using intensive agg practices and our global food production goes down and we starve, or we kill all the bugs and the food web collapses. I don't think those are the only two options. There are better farming practices (read up on no-till, see here for example: https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/11/30/saving-money-time-and-soil-economics-no-till-farming https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/11/30/saving-money-time...) that require much lower inputs (fertilizer, pesticides, water) than conventional farming techniques. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming#Profit,_economics,_yield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming#Profit,_econom...) also notes that because the soil retains water better and is more fertile in general, a farmer may have the option to plant a new crop immediately after a harvest instead of leaving a field fallow. There are many other benefits (read the Wikipedia article!) that could make a huge impact in both wildlife conservation and fighting global warming, were we to convert wholesale to no-till (or similarly restorative techniques). The problem, of course, is that we have massive political dysfunction which leads to policy paralysis. How do you fight global warming when what is currently the most powerful political party in the world (it hurts me to type that ) refuses to acknowledge that anything needs to (or can) be done about it?
cure 8y ago
Very disappointing article in the Economist. Their journalism is usually quite sound, but not this time. The very conservative bend is clearly present. The article summarizes as: there are a number of studies from specific geographies (Germany, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, etc) that show very dramatic declines (> 50%) of insect populations over the last few decades. Since there is no data for most other countries, we should not react for now until more studies are done. In the general case, when there is insufficient data, such an attitude can be seen as rational. But not when the data are so severe, and time is clearly running out. It is time for action, not for more business as usual. Ugh. I hope future generations will be around to forgive us for screwing up the planet.
- bdamm 8y ago
  They'll be around alright, but they're probably going to be so busy scraping subsistence outside the gates of the withering elite to spend much time on forgiveness.
- devoply 8y ago
  This sort of reasoning is the basis for my belief that the way we conduct our society is fundamentally flawed. It is trivial to introduce new technology, and it's very difficult to remove it. This is evident with things like cigarettes or pesticides or oil. This leads me to believe that at any time we're only one piece of technology from catastrophe and even if we realize the mistake it will take decades for us to stop using the technology that has led to catastrophe. Combine this with the fact that the amount of technology that we create and introduce is only increasing perhaps exponentially. We are in very dangerous territory but we don't realize it... and even if we realize it we can't do anything about it in the time frames needed to deal with it. A society designed for longevity does not behave this way. Instead it follows an approach of punctuated equilibrium where it accumulates technology and robustly tests it in small pilot projects that are highly monitored and contained. Then after maybe a 1000 or 10,000 years when technology has matured it introduced a set of well tested technology into the system whose effects are very well understood. In this way a society designed for longevity goes through epochs and evolution... rather than extinction in short order. It's also much easier living in such a society because change is very gradual so having to retrain or learn new things in a lifetime is not necessary.
libraryatnight 8y ago
Usually I love the Economist, but this seems like head-in-the-sand reasoning. "Oh good, the declines are only happening where we're measuring!"
corey_moncure 8y ago
The solution is, as always, less people.

81 points by jkuria 8y ago

dmix 8y ago

> Using computer models of ecosystems, Nigel Stork of Griffith University, Queensland, estimates there are 5.5m species of insect and 6.8m of terrestrial arthropods (the wider category that includes spiders and crustaceans). That implies over 80% of insects remain undiscovered. Does anyone know how this works? Is it measuring the DNA and compares with known variations and using other well-known species as a reference model to do a projection?

hydrox24 8y ago
I don't, but the abstract of the paper he published may offer some insight if you understand the key words: > In the last decade, new methods of estimating global species richness have been developed and existing ones improved through the use of more appropriate statistical tools and new data. Taking the mean of most of these new estimates indicates that globally there are approximately 1.5 million, 5.5 million, and 7 million species of beetles, insects, and terrestrial arthropods, respectively. Previous estimates of 30 million species or more based on the host specificity of insects to plants now seem extremely unlikely. With 1 million insect species named, this suggests that 80% remain to be discovered and that a greater focus should be placed on less-studied taxa such as many families of Coleoptera, Diptera, and Hymenoptera and on poorly sampled parts of the world. DNA tools have revealed many new species in taxonomically intractable groups, but unbiased studies of previously well-researched insect faunas indicate that 1–2% of species may be truly cryptic. Stork. "How Many Species of Insects and Other Terrestrial Arthropods Are There on Earth?". Annual Review of Entomology. 2018. doi: http://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ento-020117-043348 http://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ento-020117-043348 You could always email him to find out: nigel.stork (at) griffith.edu.au

SrslyJosh 8y ago

TL;DR: There are no studies of insect life in Countries A, B, and C, so no need to worry about a huge decline in biomass in the US and Europe! ಠ_ಠ

FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
It’s what I believed at 3 years old: if I can’t see it it doesn’t exist and can’t see me!

ArtDev 8y ago

The insect decline is shocking and will have drastic impacts we can only predict

patientplatypus 8y ago

The biggest issue is that the insects are dying because of pesticides and fertilizers. And it's getting worse: “The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification,” Sánchez-Bayo said. “That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.” He said the demise of insects appears to have started at the dawn of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last two decades. The 2.5% rate of annual loss over the last 25-30 years is “shocking”, Sánchez-Bayo told the Guardian: “It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none.” Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeti... So...either we stop using intensive agg practices and our global food production goes down and we starve, or we kill all the bugs and the food web collapses. I'm predicting between this, plastic, massive garbage problems and climate change we're most likely going to have mass migration, war, disease and famine outbreaks in the next twenty years. Like a billion+ dead outbreaks. As far as I can see the entire industrial revolution has been a giant externality on nature. It saddens me that me and everyone around me will have to live through this.

SrslyJosh 8y ago
> So...either we stop using intensive agg practices and our global food production goes down and we starve, or we kill all the bugs and the food web collapses. I don't think those are the only two options. There are better farming practices (read up on no-till, see here for example: https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/11/30/saving-money-time-and-soil-economics-no-till-farming https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/11/30/saving-money-time...) that require much lower inputs (fertilizer, pesticides, water) than conventional farming techniques. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming#Profit,_economics,_yield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming#Profit,_econom...) also notes that because the soil retains water better and is more fertile in general, a farmer may have the option to plant a new crop immediately after a harvest instead of leaving a field fallow. There are many other benefits (read the Wikipedia article!) that could make a huge impact in both wildlife conservation and fighting global warming, were we to convert wholesale to no-till (or similarly restorative techniques). The problem, of course, is that we have massive political dysfunction which leads to policy paralysis. How do you fight global warming when what is currently the most powerful political party in the world (it hurts me to type that ) refuses to acknowledge that anything needs to (or can) be done about it?

cure 8y ago

Very disappointing article in the Economist. Their journalism is usually quite sound, but not this time. The very conservative bend is clearly present. The article summarizes as: there are a number of studies from specific geographies (Germany, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, etc) that show very dramatic declines (> 50%) of insect populations over the last few decades. Since there is no data for most other countries, we should not react for now until more studies are done. In the general case, when there is insufficient data, such an attitude can be seen as rational. But not when the data are so severe, and time is clearly running out. It is time for action, not for more business as usual. Ugh. I hope future generations will be around to forgive us for screwing up the planet.

bdamm 8y ago
They'll be around alright, but they're probably going to be so busy scraping subsistence outside the gates of the withering elite to spend much time on forgiveness.
devoply 8y ago
This sort of reasoning is the basis for my belief that the way we conduct our society is fundamentally flawed. It is trivial to introduce new technology, and it's very difficult to remove it. This is evident with things like cigarettes or pesticides or oil. This leads me to believe that at any time we're only one piece of technology from catastrophe and even if we realize the mistake it will take decades for us to stop using the technology that has led to catastrophe. Combine this with the fact that the amount of technology that we create and introduce is only increasing perhaps exponentially. We are in very dangerous territory but we don't realize it... and even if we realize it we can't do anything about it in the time frames needed to deal with it. A society designed for longevity does not behave this way. Instead it follows an approach of punctuated equilibrium where it accumulates technology and robustly tests it in small pilot projects that are highly monitored and contained. Then after maybe a 1000 or 10,000 years when technology has matured it introduced a set of well tested technology into the system whose effects are very well understood. In this way a society designed for longevity goes through epochs and evolution... rather than extinction in short order. It's also much easier living in such a society because change is very gradual so having to retrain or learn new things in a lifetime is not necessary.

libraryatnight 8y ago

Usually I love the Economist, but this seems like head-in-the-sand reasoning. "Oh good, the declines are only happening where we're measuring!"

corey_moncure 8y ago

The solution is, as always, less people.