My feeling: brace for systemic collapse.
If you make that a specific prediction, I might like to bet against it, if you're interested.
75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
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Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#42Yes. This is a case of hard data confirming what we already know. As in - few types of butterflies I used to like, and see yearly as a kid - are gone. I see them now once in 5 years, if lucky. I bring my kids to look because it's a first time for them. On the other hand, some types of beetles, ants, flies, mosquitoes, even wasps - are just new. They were not here 20-30 years ago. Now, what are the consequences of all…
This kind of the same thing I'm seeing with firefly in Michigan. In the summer time when I first moved to MI over 30 years ago I use to see them everywhere in large amounts. This year they're back but last 3 years I didn't see them at all. As long as there are climate change deniers a.k.a Trump supports we're all in a lot of trouble, even humans.
Attributing this to climate change in it's political context is as ignorant of actual science as what you claim to be detesting.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#43Results like this are some confirmation of what everyone not entirely swaddled in the virtual worlds of city and business is already entirely aware of: that our living planet is dying. All the people I know who have lived in rural areas for decades (in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and SE. Asia) are in no doubt that their local ecologies are collapsing, and that the collapse is accelerating.
I'm not sure how useful the knowledge is at this late stage. Turning things around would require changes of a pace and scale that we have no idea how to motivate and coordinate. Fork and done, I reckon.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#44Presumably this is similar here in the U.S.? In the 80's and 90's the fronts of our cars would get so encrusted with mashed bugs that it would take real scrubbing to get them off. I haven't had to do that in many years.
If you really want that experience again you can go drive around the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota in June. I had to stop at a gas station very 30 mins because I could literally not see through my wind shield.
Junebugs on your helmet visor. I don't understand people who ride without helmets. That's gotta hurt.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Monarchs used to be a "oh cool, look, it's the 50-100 monarchs in that field which we'll see a couple times a week for the whole season" thing here. Now it's "holy crap, it's our one single monarch butterfly of the year!" thing.
That has a simple explanation, though. Monarch caterpillars can only survive on milkweed, and we've decimated the amount of milkweed around because we see it as, well, a weed.
You can help out with this by harvesting seeds and planting them all over!
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#46Yes. This is a case of hard data confirming what we already know. As in - few types of butterflies I used to like, and see yearly as a kid - are gone. I see them now once in 5 years, if lucky. I bring my kids to look because it's a first time for them. On the other hand, some types of beetles, ants, flies, mosquitoes, even wasps - are just new. They were not here 20-30 years ago. Now, what are the consequences of all…
> On the other hand, some types of beetles, ants, flies, mosquitoes, even wasps - are just new.
Afaik most of these are usually invasives species, displacing local populations, which is happening in the weirdest ways and places.
In Germany, our local ladybug species are on the verge of going extinct because an imported Asian ladybug species emits some kind of spores killing them, and the Asian ones generally being sturdier.
Eastern grey squirrels, brought to the European mainland from the UK, are also increasingly replacing local red squirrels. Red squirrels get through winter by hiding food supplies and staying lean and mean, while grey squirrels build up fat reserves.
What ends up happening is that the grey squirrels sniff out the food supplies of the red ones and clear them out to fill up their own fat reserves, that leaves the red squirrels with no food supplies to get through the winter and so they starve.
But I agree with your general sentiment, I remember nature being quite a bit "buzzier" when I was a kid, I always thought I felt that way because I might have paid more attention to things like insects as a kid, but I guess my feeling wasn't all that off.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#47Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#48My feeling: brace for systemic collapse.
I sometimes wonder what people were thinking or doing, in the days before a calamity. In Pompeii, in Lisbon, in Hiroshima, ... Unaware of what was about to happen to them. Just living their daily lives. I also sometimes wonder if future people will have reason to think of us in a similar way, when I hear of news like this, or the clathrate gun hypothesis.
>Hiroshima
Don’t know if you’ve ever read this, but here you go: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#49I'm extremely unqualified, but is it possible that the insects just learned to avoid the specific traps used to do the measurements over time?
Not really. For the traps I've seen, a powerful fan pulls air from an intake pipe at a certain height above ground level through a fine steel mesh filter. You remove the filter after a certain time period, and weigh the mass of the collected insects. You can then count them, and separate by species etc. It's difficult to avoid being sucked in so it's very unlikely that learned avoidance plays any role here; it's simply sampling flying insects in the local vicinity.
Re: 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
#50Yes. This is a case of hard data confirming what we already know. As in - few types of butterflies I used to like, and see yearly as a kid - are gone. I see them now once in 5 years, if lucky. I bring my kids to look because it's a first time for them. On the other hand, some types of beetles, ants, flies, mosquitoes, even wasps - are just new. They were not here 20-30 years ago. Now, what are the consequences of all…
I was wondering about my experiences of not seeing bugs I'd see as a kid. Not sure if I just didn't go hunting like I used to or if there was an absolute decrease. I remember spotting these many times and catching a few http://www.mappingmegan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/1-90-..., now I mainly see their hairier cousins http://www.suttonmass.org/animals/spiders/orbweavercrucifera...
Various little butterflies would be abundant seem much less now. I wish I knew their names.