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Bug Earth Science

'Hyperalarming' Study Shows Massive Insect Loss (washingtonpost.com) 336

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of long-term studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations. A new report suggests that the problem is more widespread than scientists realized. Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), the study found, and the forest's insect-eating animals have gone missing, too. The latest report, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that this startling loss of insect abundance extends to the Americas. The study's authors implicate climate change in the loss of tropical invertebrates.

Bradford Lister, a biologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, has been studying rain forest insects in Puerto Rico since the 1970s. "We went down in '76, '77 expressly to measure the resources: the insects and the insectivores in the rain forest, the birds, the frogs, the lizards," Lister said. He came back nearly 40 years later, with his colleague Andrés García, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. What the scientists did not see on their return troubled them. "Boy, it was immediately obvious when we went into that forest," Lister said. Fewer birds flitted overhead. The butterflies, once abundant, had all but vanished. García and Lister once again measured the forest's insects and other invertebrates, a group called arthropods that includes spiders and centipedes. The researchers trapped arthropods on the ground in plates covered in a sticky glue, and raised several more plates about three feet into the canopy. The researchers also swept nets over the brush hundreds of times, collecting the critters that crawled through the vegetation. Each technique revealed the biomass (the dry weight of all the captured invertebrates) had significantly decreased from 1976 to the present day. The sweep sample biomass decreased to a fourth or an eighth of what it had been. Between January 1977 and January 2013, the catch rate in the sticky ground traps fell 60-fold.
The study also found a 30-percent drop in anole lizards, which eat arthropods. Some anole species have disappeared entirely from the interior forest. Another research team captured insect-eating frogs and birds in 1990 and 2005, and found a 50 percent decrease in the number of captures. The authors attribute this decline to the changing climate.
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'Hyperalarming' Study Shows Massive Insect Loss

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  • The main driver (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Iamthecheese ( 1264298 ) on Monday October 15, 2018 @10:44PM (#57484190)
    The standard complaints about drugs, antibiotics, and surfactants will certainly be suspect, but I wonder whether migration patterns [thoughtco.com] might be affected by roads. It certainly must at least be putting some evolutionary pressure on the beasties what with the slabs of hot, dangerous pavement blocking things off every which way.
    • Re:The main driver (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @01:19AM (#57484658)

      The main reason is likely efforts to end the current deadliest illness that plagues humanity: malaria. We actively destroy insect breeding grounds to contain it, because malaria kills more people on the planet than any other illness on a yearly basis.

      Bonus points from countless other illnesses also spread by insects that are not as prevalent as malaria, but tend to also be debilitating and often lethal.

      The real question here is: are insects so important as to lose millions every year to illnesses they spread, and even more survive but be crippled for life with consequences?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        That's an interesting question. I don't mean to attack you personally, but it does show the very kind of thinking that got us here:

        Are [any other creatures] worth anything in comparison to:
        * Human life
        * Human goals ?

        Sadly, for the majority in the West the answers' NO, if they even consider the question.

        How could the life of a mosquito compare against homo sapiens?
        How about a thousand?
        How about an entire marsh's worth?

        They always lose out.

        And people that act on those calculations end up doing irreparable dam

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @09:58AM (#57486232)

          This shows the severe disconnect from reality present in nature in many of the green activists.

          1. Humans vs nature dichotomy is the norm. Humans as part of nature never even enter the thought. Something only someone utterly disconnected from nature, only someone who lives in modern city could think.
          2. "West is uniquely anti-nature and pro-human". Reality is, it's the most anti-human and pro-nature. You need not look beyond how shamelessly people outside West dump their waste, or where the plastic garbage filling the oceans comes from to see that "think of the nature before yourself" attitude is utterly absent outside the West beyond a few village idiot types.
          3. Strange empathy towards other species that assumes that other species can be more valuable than their own. Not a single creature on this entire planet follows this philosophy in their actions. Nor does overwhelming majority of people, luckily, as this attitude is self-exterminationist. This mindset is almost uniquely locked to the certain parts of modern Green movement, which can commonly be described as "medieval nature worship" - worship of idealized view of nature as something beautiful, that human tarnish. Without ever realising that nature in reality is the bloodiest, most brutal, most amoral and unethical state of being, by definition.

          This mode of thinking iss utterly absent outside West, and represents a tiny and vocal minority among even the Green movement itself. It's unfortunate that it's increasingly taking over the movement, and its various forms ranging from deranged animal activists from PETA to vegan extremists violently attacking people eating meat dishes in restaurants are increasingly taking control over the movement that used to be quite close to nature and very much pro-"humans as a part of nature" narrative rather than "humans against nature" one that is advanced here.

        • Whoa whoa there buddy... Why do you assume I think you are worth anything in comparison to my life and goals? You seem to have this false notion that humans are all together on this and it's some sort of us-vs-them setup with humans vs nature. Ha, no. Sorry to burst that bubble, but we are not inherently altruistic. Do I care about your life? Yes, but only to the extent that society is pretty handy towards keeping me alive and furthering my goals. Do I care about marsh's? Yes, but only to the extent that I

      • This is also happening in places where malaria controls are not in effect, though... that's a good contributing factor to keep in mind but not the only thing. To answer your last question: if we collapse the biosphere we end up like Blade Runner 2049. If we are successful with efforts to eradicate the specific human parasites that cause human disease while not killing off the other arthropods then that would be great. If, for example, gene drives work to kill just the handful of mosquito species that ca
        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Malaria isn't the only disease we attempt to eradicate insect populations for.

          As for "collapse of the biosphere", there were more mosquitoes in Lapland last year than there are people on the planet. And that's the northernmost mosquitoes, who are under the heaviest evolutionary pressure from global warming, and a fairly small chunk of the biosphere.

          Not to even mention the "moose flies" or whatever that particular fly that literally goes under the moose's skin to breed called in English. You should ask the m

          • Oh I agree, we won't collapse the biosphere even if we wiped out all species of mosquitos. That would happen, however, if we wiped out all insects. I believe the English term for the moose fly you're describing is a botfly. They have ones that infest humans in South America...
            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Fuck my life. I remember seeing one moose that was felled by hunters where they literally had to skin it in a certain way because of all those wingless flies having a literal orgy under its skin.

              For that to happen to a human being? That's fucking horrifying.

    • Not sure how antibiotics would affect butterflies. In Britain, monoculture fields starve insects. It's possible that cutting down forests and planting monocultures is having a devastating impact.

    • There might also be some cyclical stuff going on. It seems like every year it's something different at my house. Last year, it was Box Elders, the year before that, it was Yellow Jackets. This year, it looks like Ladybugs, which aren't anywhere near as annoying as the other two. I remember one year we had a "plague" of frogs. For several weeks we had heavy rain, and I had frogs in the lawn for a couple of weeks after that. I'd be out mowing, and the frogs would be fleeing out ahead of my lawn mower. Never s
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday October 15, 2018 @10:49PM (#57484206)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: Studies (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 15, 2018 @10:51PM (#57484214)

      Why don't they just do tag and release

    • Lie (Score:2, Informative)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      You are lying.

      From the study:

      climate warming is the major driver of reductions in arthropod abundance, indirectly precipitating a bottom-up trophic cascade and consequent collapse of the forest food web
      • The population in Puerto Rico has almost doubled since the 70's. Maybe that has something to do with it?
      • by phayes ( 202222 )

        Also in the study is the following proof that the diminished diversity is solely imputable to Global Warming:
        .

        Impressive, isn't it...

  • by Ranger ( 1783 ) on Monday October 15, 2018 @11:06PM (#57484254) Homepage
    is out. What then are we going to eat when we run out of food?

    Oh, I know. Soylent Green [youtube.com].
    • It's 2018 I still can't buy that stuff.

      I am going to have to satisfy myself with rotisserie child.

    • is out. What then are we going to eat when we run out of food? Oh, I know. Soylent Green [youtube.com].

      An old cliche but a true one:

      Only when the last tree has been cut down
      When the last river been poisoned,
      When the last fish been caught,
      Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

  • A directed attack that was claimed would actually destroy the ecosystem up through birds

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Which just wound up seeing to it poor people got malaria

    Now global warming has killed off insects by making conditions more favorable to them ? Is there no limit to its power.

  • Changing climate? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Monday October 15, 2018 @11:26PM (#57484316) Homepage Journal
    Try local pollution and continuous habitat loss. When you destroy habitat (especially continuous habitat) you lose. Much more of a threat than climate change.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      It's good to see you have a healthy disagreement with the authors of the study, it's just bad to see you using your gut instincts about the topic to try to supplant the scientist's conclusion. That's like... how Republicans operate.

    • by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @04:31AM (#57485068)

      Try local pollution and continuous habitat loss. When you destroy habitat (especially continuous habitat) you lose. Much more of a threat than climate change.

      Eeeeh.... no. Many species of animals and plants are highly temperature sensitive and forests in particular don’t just up roots and migrate north when the global temperature goes up by 2-4 degrees on average.

      • Agreed that habitat loss is not the problem in these studies, as they are going to heavily forested areas to look at trends. Germany is showing 76% flying insect loss in German nature preserves?!?! They have a ton of forests, 32% of Germany is covered in forest.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Anecdotally, from 30 years back to today we have I'd estimate about 1/20 the amount of bees in the three forested areas I frequent in my state (relatives live in the sticks). Butterflies are less than half. Mosquitoes

    • Not just local. I moved to a super rural area in the Appalacian mountains in '80 or so, as I like nature. It's a beautiful place, super clean air, little human population or impact, plenty of rain, all the good stuff if you like nature.
      It's purely anecdotal - one data point - but the whole time I've lived here, every year there has seen a reduction in insects, peeper frogs, goldinches...pretty much all but deer and raccoons, all less every year, and it's kinda depressing.
      No new population of humans, no
  • Insects are annoying. They are also extremely adaptable. They will adapt, or other insects will fill the void left by those that don't.

    The world changes, fucking duh. Ecosystems change. Climate changes. Even when we're not involved.

    • Re:No tears here (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jzanu ( 668651 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @01:16AM (#57484650)
      Don't be dense. This severity only occurs after catastrophic disasters and in the immediate vicinity that is destroyed. Otherwise it takes thousands or hundreds of thousands of years to see change in this short a time period. The fact that it occurred in what should have been pristine or undisturbed forest is a horrible sign that we have in fact underestimated the impact of human activity on the environment that we depend on for survival.
      • If you read the article, you will see that the study actually investigated the impact of catastrophes and habitat reduction as alternate sources of impact. They were contributing factors but not the primary driver in the data collected.
  • by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @01:42AM (#57484696)
    I'm super glad I don't have kids. Our rapidly changing ecosystem is going to make planet Earth really, really nasty for humans in the next century.

    We're already starting to see mass migration due to climate change. That's going to get worse because currently habitable areas are going to become uninhabitable, and because of exponential population growth.

    If we have some food systems collapse, as these insect studies seem to indicate is already happening, well... that's pretty scary.

    Humans have grown technology much faster than than they have the ability to think about the repercussions of using it. This isn't good at all.
    • I'm right there with you. My wife and I are in our 30's and don't have even a twinge of wanting kids. And for the trolls: I don't go around getting in people's faces trying to rain on their parade if they already have kids. (However, if they cop a "your life isn't complete without kids" attitude it's all fair game)

      IMHO opinion, the easiest and most humane way to help the environment is TO STOP MAKING MORE PEOPLE.
      Economies will have to learn how to deal with not having a generation of more abundant peopl
  • by jtgd ( 807477 )

    They've told us that meat production is unsustainable and in the future we will have to eat insects.

    Maybe that prediction won't come true after all.

    • by joh ( 27088 )

      Nobody ever said you'd be going to eat insects being caught in the wild. It would be insects that are being farmed, just as with nearly all other animals we eat. The percentage of wild animals globally is hardly more than a rounding error compared to cattle etc. anyway.

  • That's evolution, right there, in front of your eyes! Those critters are getting smarter!

  • mosquitoes are still around, in droves.
  • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @04:30AM (#57485066)

    There has been a massive increase of diversion of the water from that rainforest.

    https://www.fs.fed.us/global/i... [fs.fed.us]

    Lets not confuse the issue though ... it's all climate change.

    • I don't know that it is climate change, but what explains Germany's 76% decline in flying insects in pristine nature preserve habitat? That shit has me worried.

      "In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few

  • The insects are clearly in cahoots with the scientific community and are hiding out of site in a bid to trick the politicians into action.

  • Some scientist needs to see if the lowering of biomass correlates to the increase in c02 in the atmosphere.

    Temperature change in this case may not be the key. It could be the change in the atmosphere.

  • I've mentioned this before to family and friends.

    When I was a kid (NOT THAT LONG AGO), I distinctly remember the HUNDREDS of lightning-bugs glowing. The night would pulse with flickering dots. We would run around and catch them and put them into jars and keep them overnight as lanterns.

    Now, like, 10-15 years later, I have not seen more than a few dozen. It's just occasional blips. It doesn't matter where I go. It doesn't matter if I go home to my family's house where it was originally. I barely see them at

    • And butterflies, used to see lots of monarchs and so on. At least there are still bumblebees in the garden. These days I almost feel like leaving the damn caterpillars eating my broccoli and kale alone... seeing weird stuff like woolly caterpillars climb the fence posts and die, not even burst open from wasps or anything...
  • I think it is insecticides and herbicides. A recent study found roundup to be responsible largely for Honeybee Colony Collapse. You also have the huge amounts of insecticide people add to their lawns to control things like cinchbugs and snails, the vast amounts applied around peoples homes to control household pests, etc, the herbicides added to fields also affect insects and move up the food chain. All of this stuff washes with the rain into rivers and bodies of water and circulates through the environment

    • Another possible cause are GMOs. Many GMOS are toxic due to their side-effects. But many are also designed to essentially have a built in toxn, bt toxin, built into them. This toxin is toxic to insects. So you have all of this GMO crap around, GMO corn, GMO soy, GMO this and that, and this stuff can end up basically everywhere. Remember that the GMO crop plant will become a wild plant. So your going to have these GMO things growing wild in forests and it produces its own built in insecticide that kills in

  • by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @08:35AM (#57485802)
    It has been reported [cnn.com] before, I think also here on slashdot. It would be interesting to estimate if the missing insects (their body is made of carbon and other elements) had a significant role as a carbon sink. A back-on-the-envelope calculation gives me roughly 1% or less of the world CO2 production, but I am not very expert in this field.
    • by zmooc ( 33175 )

      Dead insects don't decay within a year. In fact, many may take much longer than a few years, some parts effectively not decaying at all. So the effect of any missing insects quickly adds up over the years. However, most insects eat other living things that are probably just as effective at being a carbon sink when they're not eaten by insects.

      Therefore, I'd say the missing insects don't really have a big direct effect. It might just as well be the other way around; insects help organic matter decay. They pl

  • what idiots, jumping on the "it's all climate change" bandwagon.

    destroying forests for farmland with pesticides and herbicides is the cause.

    • This is virgin rainforest under heavy protection on island with minimal additional inputs from industry. Also, the study did NOT discount habitat loss or pesticides. The scientists investigated both of those options and found them to be notable but not the primary driver of the change. Go read the full article.
  • I, for one, welcome our new lack of insect overlords

  • Where's the study of the actual effects, in a controlled lab environment, of a 2C temperature increase on the creatures they're saying are so negatively impacted? There are none? Really? I'm shocked. (No, I'm not actually shocked).

    What they're basically saying is my dog will die if I raise the temperature in my house from 20C to 22C. Or if I take him outside in the summer, I guess by their logic he'll spontaneously combust and start a forest fire.

    There is so little science or scientific method being ap

  • No need to worry CLIMATE CHANGE can do everything!

    Lost your car keys? CLIMATE CHANGE!

    Icy roads on the way to work CLIMATE CHANGE!

    Hurricane in Florida Cli...oh sorry that was SUPER TRUMP!

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