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Where have all the insects gone?

sciencemag.org

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Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#81

Post by civilian »

throwaway423447 wrote: post #74
notadoc wrote: post #63

> No one can prove that the pesticides are to blame for the decline, however. No one can prove that insecticides are responsible for killing insects? If only someone would do some sort of study on this, or perhaps if we somehow had some way to know the purpose or function of pesticides and insecticides.

... and two minutes later the name of the brave person will be manure. Not because one's egregiously wrong, not because of lack of ethics, but because it'll be affecting many powerful people and their emissaries in the academia. Common story in the GMO industry. Oh, and it doesn't hurt to be prepared for all the ad hominem hit pieces: "Left loony" "commie" "anti-science" ... The conquering grounds for the corporatocr…

So I mean, if you're trying to take a stand against pesticides, you should _be in favor_ of the Bt-toxin GMOs. The GMOs that produce their own pesticide are great, because there ends up being _less_ pesticide in the field in general. (The alternative to having a plant producing their own GMOs is that, obviously, they'll just dump the field with pesticides.) Bt-toxin is also fairly specific to which insects it effects: https://gmoanswers.com/ask/how-can-adding-lot-toxic-poison-p... (this is a pro-gmo site, but the guy answering is still an Associate Professor, which has to count for something.)

Please note that organic foods still use pesticides, even though the pesticides come from "natural sources". Keep in mind that "natural sources" doesn't mean anything-- arsenic is naturally occurring. :) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#82

Post by throwanem »

purephase wrote: post #79
Lordarminius wrote: post #61

I thought I was the only one to notice this. When I was a kid there were a ton of grasshoppers around. Now kids don't even know what they are. A related observation I have made is that ALL the frogs have disappeared leaving only toads. I recall reading somewhere that this is due to UV radiation that kills off the eggs. Its going to be a silent planet soon

Yeah, you're spot on. Grasshoppers and frogs were everywhere in the 80's when I was a kid. I can't remember the last time I even saw a grasshopper. Not sure if it's related, but I rarely see dew any more either.

Where in the world are you? There's deer all over the damn place here, despite that it's a city where you wouldn't really expect off the top of your head to find them. And the last time I went wandering deer trails - which was last week, actually - I saw plenty of grasshoppers, including a couple the size of my thumb, along with a half dozen or so deer, one rather suspicious fox, a Cooper's hawk soaring overhead, several small furry things which might've made the hawk a good supper, and more midges, gnats, noseeums, and general tiny flies-up-your-nose things than I could guess within two orders of magnitude. Oh, and one large bush that I'm pretty sure contained a beehive, although I wasn't about to approach any closer once I noticed it was humming!

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#83

Post by [deleted] »

Daishiman wrote: post #76
jballanc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The planet isn't dying. The planet is just a ball of rock running loops around the gravity well of the closest star. We are, however, in the midst of the sixth great extinction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction . The evidence for this is pretty dang convincing, even independent of things like global climate change, and it has been going on for quite a while now, starting with the disappearance of meg…

For the person on the street who does not even care about the details of ocean acidification or atmospheric CO2 concentrations, "the planet is dying" is a sufficiently strong and useful statement. You're doing exactly what I'm saying playing with semantics. For all intents and purposes on the timescales that we actually care about, the planet is dying.

[deleted]

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#86

Post by [deleted] »

VA3FXP wrote: post #18
Daishiman wrote: post #13

So when will people stop minimizing that, literally, the planet is dying?

When will people stop with this hyperbole? The planet; as-in this rocky, water-world orbiting Sol, will exist for BILLIONS of years. The _life_ on this planet AS WE KNOW IT is dying, along with ourselves. That is a huge difference and one that needs to be repeated with as much clarity as possible. Will homo-sapiens still exist in 10,000 years? maybe. 100,000 years? doubtful. 1,000,000 years? nope. Will single-celled…

[deleted]

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#87

Post by tropo »

Lordarminius wrote: post #61

I thought I was the only one to notice this. When I was a kid there were a ton of grasshoppers around. Now kids don't even know what they are. A related observation I have made is that ALL the frogs have disappeared leaving only toads. I recall reading somewhere that this is due to UV radiation that kills off the eggs. Its going to be a silent planet soon

Most amphibians (frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, etc.) are getting wiped out by a skin infection that has spread around the world. The toads in your area might be resistant. The less-aquatic behavior might help.

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#88

Post by giardini »

musha68k wrote: post #54
giardini wrote: post #50

Lots of speculation present in the article, which points out the need for some good science to determine whether we're facing an imminent insect population collapse or its "business as usual". As for the cars... More cars and more car miles this year than in yesteryear means fewer bugsplats per vehicle mile. I would assume that, once a vehicle has swept past a volume, the bug population in that volume is restored by…

From the article, past the first paragraphs.. "Over that time the group, the Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps aga…

The study concerns a 220-acre area.

To extrapolate from that to the world is a mistake. From what I believe is the original paper (copy at http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/20... ):

"The results show that, in the same two areas, sampled in the years 1989 and 2013, there was a dramatic fall in the number of flying insects.

Using the same traps, in the same areas, significant reductions of insect populations, of more than 75%, were found.

Our data confirms, that in the areas studied, less than 25% of the original number of flying insects collected in 1989, were still present in 2013.

Orboicher Bruch Area

The Orboicher Bruch, to the Northwest of Krefeld, is a designated Nature Reserve of around 100 hectares (220 acres). Due to the reserve’s relatively remote location and its rugged landscape, intensive farming came to the area only recently."

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#89

Post by ceedan »

ashark wrote: post #9

Interesting. So maybe it wasn't just my imagination. I remember butterflies being everywhere in Spring in this area when I was a kid. Fields and air full of 'em for weeks. Monarchs especially, but all kinds. I haven't seen that kind of thing even once in probably a decade, at least. And the windshield thing. I hadn't really thought about it, but I remember my parents having to scrape the windshield just about every g…

I have the same childhood memories.

Mid 90's - Mid 2000s: We did a 10 hour road trip twice every summer to visit family, and always joked about how the car had a mustache because the front bumper was peppered with bugs. 2007/2011 - During college, I used to do 6-8 hour road drives up and down Florida to visit friends and we used to catch a butterfly or 2 on the window. 2011-2013 - After graduating college, I made a few more of those drives and I can't remember catching a butterfly in the windshield wipers. I've never had the bumper-mustache problem since becoming a driver, either.

The only bug that seems to thrive now-a-days are mosquitos. Still plenty of those in Florida... probably less, but I don't have any good childhood reference

Re: Where have all the insects gone?

#90

Post by ge96 »

unrelated thought

I was listening to a podcast about this folding microscope thing and they were talking about how this special "cell?" becomes a coil and is able to pull oxygen/becomes the 'lungs' for the insect... pretty neat.

If you get shot in the lungs lay on your side to try keep them open. PSA, I don't know I looked it up one day.

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