A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

Reports of falling insect numbers around the world are not new. International reviews have estimated annual losses globally of between 1% and 2.5% of total biomass every year.

Widespread use of pesticides and fertilisers, light and chemical pollution, loss of habitat and the growth of industrial agriculture have all carved into their numbers. Often, these were deaths of proximity: insects are sensitive creatures, and any nearby source of pollution can send their populations crumbling.

But what Janzen and Hallwachs are witnessing is a part of a newer phenomenon: the catastrophic collapse of insect populations in supposedly protected regions of forest. “In the parts of Costa Rica that are heavily hit by pesticides, the insects are completely wiped out,” Hallwachs says.

  • apprehensively_human@lemmy.caEnglish
    96·
    5 days ago

    Do you guys remember driving down the highway in the 90’s and having your car absolutely covered in the mangled corpses of insects? To the point where wiper fluid is called bug wash?

    I don’t know if this is the same everywhere, but my car stays pretty clean these days.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.eeEnglish
      54·
      5 days ago

      Yeah, I’m in California’s central valley, which is a lot like the Serengeti in that it’s a grassy desert-ish thing that’s seasonally wetted by snowpack melt. It’s actually pretty swampy in its natural state. Used to be that you couldn’t drive forty minutes here without your car being a hopeless mess, especially in the late winter/spring. Now, I almost never hit a bug at all. It’s been that way for years. I pointed it out to my nature-loving MAGA mom and it freaked her the fuck out.

    • Gerudo@lemm.eeEnglish
      28·
      4 days ago

      There are scientific studies on windshield bug death. If you want to solidify how big this insect collapse is, it’s scary. Those studies have seen up to 90% decline in certain areas. These studies also took aerodynamics into account.

    • Jo Miran@lemmy.mlEnglish
      24·
      5 days ago

      I lived in Louisiana in the 90’s. If you didn’t add a mesh (think window screen) to your car grill before driving on the highway, your radiator grill would clog with bugs and you’d overheat.

        • Jo Miran@lemmy.mlEnglish
          13·
          5 days ago

          I drive the I-10/12 stretch between Austin and Orlando at least four times per year and I used to drive between Austin and the French Quarter in the early 2010’s all the time because I had a place in the quarter. I have not seen bugs like I did in the 90’s since around 2010.

    • Throbbing_banjo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      15·
      5 days ago

      I was actually thinking about this very thing last week driving across Costa Rica. Aside from ants and the occasional gnat/mosquito, we really saw very few insects across the country as a whole. So it’s a global phenomenon, and things are probably a lot worse then we realize and care to admit.