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Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

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Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#91

Post by chickenimprint »

newsclues wrote: post #83
fleddr wrote: post #74

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes. Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years. Beetles: 75% decline since 1985. Ladybugs: 50% reduction in 20 years. Across the border in Germany: a 75% decline in flying insects since 1989. It doesn't take much of a scientist to see the trend. I've been hiking the forests here multiple times per week for…

Is there a push to move to smaller regenerative farms occurring?

How would that work? We don't have enough land as it is. And we can't pay for the additional labor small farms need, or food inflation will explode.

Making agriculture unproductive will just push the demand outwards like a beaker of toxic reactants boiling over. We can't impose more trade restrictions on foreign agricultural goods either, for fear of a trade war.

This hopeless romanticism of small organic mom-and-pop farming is misguided. The only solution I see is huge, highly efficient, automated, but also highly regulated farms. That, and veganism.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#92

Post by jgraham »

fleddr wrote: post #74

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes. Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years. Beetles: 75% decline since 1985. Ladybugs: 50% reduction in 20 years. Across the border in Germany: a 75% decline in flying insects since 1989. It doesn't take much of a scientist to see the trend. I've been hiking the forests here multiple times per week for…

It's good to see a comment that recognises that this "bug splatter on the windshield" data is mostly just an easily observed hook to connect the measured declines to people's everyday life experiences.

The topic seems to come up here ever few months, and there's always a significant percentage of the discussion devoted to aerodynamic effects, or changes in insect distribution specific to roadside habitats. Those converstations often feel like "middlebrow dismissal": people who think the fact they can come up with a plausible alternate explaination for the data given a few seconds thought means it's likely that the studies are totally flawed and can be ignored.

Meanwhile if you dig in to the actual evidence, the studies based on vehicle data show a small negative correlation between vehicle age and number of impacted flying insects (i.e. older cars have slightly fewer splats, not more). More importantly, the general trends of declining biomass of (especially, but not only) flying insects reproduce over a wide range of methodologies and habitats. For skeptical readers, there are some links to studies in a previous comment I made on a previous thread on this same general topic [1].

Having said that, I think you've missed one of the big factors that's likely to contribute to the decline: the widespread use of insecticides (especially) and herbicides in industrial agriculture. Studies on bees show that even insects exposed to something much lower than the LD50 of certain insecticides experience behavioural changes that dramatically decrease their survival rates. And because "pest" insects typicaly have short lifecycles and rapid reproduction rates, they're often best placed to evolve tolerances for the insecticides, so there's pressure on farmers to use more and more to get the same effect.

For anyone who's interested in an introduction to this topic aimed at the general public (like me!), but written by a Professor of Entomology, I can recommend Slient Earth [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31278206 [2] https://bookshop.org/p/books/silent-earth-averting-the-insec...

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#93

Post by aredox »

another_story wrote: post #85
vlovich123 wrote: post #17

To everyone replying “aerodynamics”, I’ve had the same car for about 9 years now and the drive along the 5 from Bay Area to LA feels like there’s fewer bugs on my windshield (granted not recorded diligently for scientific purposes but whereas before I’d need to scrub the windshield at least once halfway these days I can drive all the way and still don’t need a wash at the end) Same goes for the argument that bugs hav…

I actually find it rather interesting how many people here, in a forum I generally assume to be better informed than elsewhere, seem wholly unaware of the dramatic decrease in insects over the last few decades.

Strong "I am very smart" contrarian energy here.

See also this tale: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2376002/

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#94

Post by dutchbrit »

fleddr wrote: post #74

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes. Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years. Beetles: 75% decline since 1985. Ladybugs: 50% reduction in 20 years. Across the border in Germany: a 75% decline in flying insects since 1989. It doesn't take much of a scientist to see the trend. I've been hiking the forests here multiple times per week for…

It’s also sad to see what people are doing to their gardens over here. Fake grass, no plants/just bricks. Not to mention the municipalities mowing nice patches of grass/plants/flowers where insects thrive.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#95

Post by lettergram »

fleddr wrote: post #74

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes. Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years. Beetles: 75% decline since 1985. Ladybugs: 50% reduction in 20 years. Across the border in Germany: a 75% decline in flying insects since 1989. It doesn't take much of a scientist to see the trend. I've been hiking the forests here multiple times per week for…

While I don’t disagree with those two points I don’t know if they’re the primary cause.

I also think it’s important to put it into context.

1. These insects weren’t really robust to begin with. Take the monarch butterfly in the North America. They actually needed primarily milkweed to survive. A single point of failure (milkweed) can cause the population to collapse. When we put up houses and converted land to farms, you’re correct we killed many of the native species, but those species were HIGHLY tuned to a particular niche. In 100-200 years it’s likely the insects that survived will re-occupy new niches.

2. Insects typically need a much smaller range to survive, so hikes in the same woods as when you were a kid doesn’t add up. Unless there was another massive environmental issue - such as pesticides or chemicals like DDT which have a secondary impact. Personally, that bird egg analogy sounds exactly like what the US saw with DDT and the collapse of the eagle population.

3. In the 1950s in the Midwest there had already been farmland all over for 50+ years. Same with Ireland (for hundreds). The insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last few decades. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough historical data to confirm what it is exactly. Even in the 1970s you’d have solid layers of bugs on windshields driving between cornfields. Now, nothing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_population...

To me, this indicates a chemical or set there of, as the most likely culprits.

EDIT: DET -> DDT

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#96

Post by badtension »

globalise83 wrote: post #84
badtension wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you grossly overestimate how much space does car infrastructure hold in relation to literally millions of km^2 of free space around it. Assuming your observation is right its impact would be minuscule.

But we're not discussing the free space around roads, I'm talking about the width of the road X length of road X 2.5m where the bugs get splatted. If there are more cars travelling in that space, fewer bugs will be splatted by each car even if the level overall remains the same.

I see what you mean. This still seems far fetched especially when taking into account rural and remote places where even doubling the traffic would mean passing 1 car every 10 minutes.

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#97

Post by vidanay »

lettergram wrote: post #95
fleddr wrote: post #74

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes. Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years. Beetles: 75% decline since 1985. Ladybugs: 50% reduction in 20 years. Across the border in Germany: a 75% decline in flying insects since 1989. It doesn't take much of a scientist to see the trend. I've been hiking the forests here multiple times per week for…

While I don’t disagree with those two points I don’t know if they’re the primary cause. I also think it’s important to put it into context. 1. These insects weren’t really robust to begin with. Take the monarch butterfly in the North America. They actually needed primarily milkweed to survive. A single point of failure (milkweed) can cause the population to collapse. When we put up houses and converted land to farms,…

DDT not DET

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#98

Post by data_maan »

lettergram wrote: post #95
fleddr wrote: post #74

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes. Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years. Beetles: 75% decline since 1985. Ladybugs: 50% reduction in 20 years. Across the border in Germany: a 75% decline in flying insects since 1989. It doesn't take much of a scientist to see the trend. I've been hiking the forests here multiple times per week for…

While I don’t disagree with those two points I don’t know if they’re the primary cause. I also think it’s important to put it into context. 1. These insects weren’t really robust to begin with. Take the monarch butterfly in the North America. They actually needed primarily milkweed to survive. A single point of failure (milkweed) can cause the population to collapse. When we put up houses and converted land to farms,…

> In 100-200 years it’s likely the insects that survived will re-occupy new niches.

Do you have any data to back this up?

Also, the problem is that not many insects ARE going to survive.

> The insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last few decades.

This is probably outright misleading, since you don't have the data prior to those decades. The common mistake is that people use their own lifespan as a measure for things.

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Everybody talks about the gender pay gap and ethnic diversity these days, but biodiversity is not on the radar :(

Re: Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

#99

Post by Beltalowda »

dutchbrit wrote: post #94
fleddr wrote: post #74

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes. Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years. Beetles: 75% decline since 1985. Ladybugs: 50% reduction in 20 years. Across the border in Germany: a 75% decline in flying insects since 1989. It doesn't take much of a scientist to see the trend. I've been hiking the forests here multiple times per week for…

It’s also sad to see what people are doing to their gardens over here. Fake grass, no plants/just bricks. Not to mention the municipalities mowing nice patches of grass/plants/flowers where insects thrive.

One thing I've noticed after moving back to the Netherlands is how absolutely obsessed people are with keeping things "tidy". In a way, it's nice I guess, at least sometimes, but it comes with some serious costs too. This is not unique to the Netherlands, but we're probably the best (or worst?) at it, except maybe Singapore.
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