2 ms·
More than 50% of insects have disappeared since 1970, an ecologist warns
- jdkee 7y agoFrom the article, "Another study conducted in Puerto Rico found that 98% of the island's ground insects had vanished since the 1970s." That is simply a bewildering statistic. A very large area of that tropical island is extremely hilly and unsuited to large scale agriculture. Most of the human population within a few miles of the coast. The inland areas should be teeming with insect life. From the study on PR cited by the article, "Our analyses provide strong support for the hypothesis that climate warming has been a major factor driving reductions in arthropod abundance, and that these declines have in turn precipitated decreases in forest insectivores in a classic bottom-up cascade. . . . As the sixth mass extinction continues to decimate the world’s biota (137, 138), these data will be crucial to understanding the impact of climate change on terrestrial food webs (139), ecosystem dynamics (140), and biodiversity (8), and to formulating conservation strategies aimed at mitigating the effects of future climate forcing." A stunning and tragic conclusion.