Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 90 posts

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#61

Post by aaronbrethorst »

acdha wrote: post #29
NewJazz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mosquito dunks and clear standing or pooling water.

This stopped working in the mid-Atlantic when invasive tiger mosquitoes arrived. They need like a bottle cap sized amount of water so even things like a flower can hold enough water for them to reproduce. We’re using scented lures which have the right salt + lipid combo to attract mosquitoes. It helps but I still wish Nathan Myrvold had seriously developed that “photonic fence” product.

I guess he was busy photographing hamburgers or hanging out with criminals.

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#63

Post by crispinb »

groovy2shoes wrote: post #48
nomel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a salesman come to our place saying that a neighbor had spiders, so their whole backyard was treated! I laughed and shut the door.

i had a salesman say he noticed i had a lot of spiders around outside. he asked who i currently use for pest control. i said, "the spiders." he excused himself and left. maybe they don't make great decorations, but the spiders generally stay in their webs and don't bother me. i once watched one defeat a wasp twice its size. i might feel differently if we had any dangerous spiders around here (just black widows, and t…

> maybe they don't make great decorations

Some of ours are decorative enough, eg this orb weaver I exchange greetings with most mornings: https://www.pasteboard.co/07o5TWpFLUY8.png

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#65

Post by stinos »

gravelc wrote: post #44
tastyfreeze wrote: post #2

It is my hope that humans can ditch their love affair with pesticides. This is just one example of the unintended impact of pesticides. I have also found dying birds in my yard a few days after the neighbor sprayed their house perimeter for ants. No toxicology report but there was no sign of any physical damage.

Pesticides form the backbone of crop protection. Without them, we're looking at at least a 40% reduction in global yield, and much greater uncertainty in food supply chains (the oil shocks show how bad that can be). Pesticides per se are not the problem; synthetic broad-spectrum pesticides with many unintended effects are. They're often toxic to people and ecosystems, and resistance among pests and pathogens is incre…

Pesticides form the backbone of crop protection. Without them, we're looking at at least a 40% reduction in global yield

Such numbers might be ballpark correct, but I think the "without them" here literally means "if we take current industrial agriculture and simply drop pesticides" i.e. without any other change. Pretty obvious that yes, doing so will easily get you to numbers of that magnitude.

So it's a bit strange not considering the various root causes of what requires those pesticieds in the first place: monocultures on dead soil and nothing which even begins to resemble a normal ecosystem in sight. Those causes happen to be exactly among the causes of the massive insect/more general biodiversity decline we're witnessing. Along with pesticides, sure, but habitat loss is likely an even bigger factor.

So while those biopesticides are probably a net win over what is used now, it's rather unclear if they'll have a meaningful impact on that decline. Which is why reports on solutions for the decline also always include adressing at least part of the root causes, like partial shifts back to landscapes which are a mix of nature and agriculture. Where there's at least a bush/tree line between fields, for instance. Which also helps keeping certain pests in control.

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#66

Post by internet_points »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #34

We need the poison we spray through the entire environment to kill only non-beautiful insects. Startup opportunity, anyone?

"specific" pesticides is a lucrative myth that has been told and sold for a hundred years

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#67

Post by jna_sh »

JCBird1012 wrote: post #14
1659447091 wrote: post #11

>> To better understand the stresses on these migratory species, scientists at Lighthouse Field are testing a new ultralight radio tag. Weighing less than a tenth of a gram, these tags, when placed on butterflies, can passively ping Bluetooth- and location-enabled cellphones of anyone nearby. They put a solar powered tracking tag on a butterfly... Then made an app and gamified it to get people to use their phones to…

A related project, but for birds - https://motus.org Motus is a distrbuted network of ground stations for tracking birds and other species (like bats!) for research - they also use CTT tags for tracking (along with tags from another company called Lotek - https://www.lotek.com )

Motus is also used for bats and insects! The butterfly project the parent linked to is using Motus: “ This year, new receivers have been added to Motus towers around the Southwest as well as special nodes to pick up their signals.”

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#68

Post by stinos »

darth_avocado wrote: post #52
jonah wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should only be planting native species whatever they are for your specific area.

I think majority of places are beyond that point. I’ve found that planting whatever works, even if incrementally, should work. I plant natives, but for natives alone won’t work unless my entire neighborhood does so. So you supplement with non natives that provide something. Milkweed will help with the butterfly larvae but what do you feed the butterflies? Something that’s long blooming and nectar rich. So I let the r…

So you supplement with non natives that provide something

I get the sentiment but tend to I disagree. Maybe some very specific species might benefit somewhat, but in general the principle makes little sense. Whatever native fauna there is in your area spent thousands of years in relationships with other native flora and fauna. So not just plants, also the soil life, the combination of plants, the terrain variation and so on. Hence replicating that as close as possible should be what works best. Which a far as nectar/pollen goes means not a single species but a combination providing it throughout the seasons. Whereas 'long blooming and nectar rich' completely ignores specialist insects which only get nectar and pollen from one particular species or group of species, insects laying eggs on specific species only, and so on. Butterfly bush is considered a McDonalds for insects, and that's actually a pretty good metaphor. Red valerian is in the same ballpark.

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#69

Post by contingencies »

gorgonian wrote: post #39
shoobiedoo wrote: post #22

I'll never forget my first week working housing demolition in the Japanese countryside a few years ago. We were outside tearing down an old house, when I saw what I thought were bats. In broad daylight. But they were moving slowly... and I could see their wings beating. Holy crap, those are butterflies. Huge, stunningly beautiful, butterflies. And not just one or two, but many of them. When I was able to get a bit cl…

I visited the rainforest in Brazil (Iguazú Falls / Foz do Iguaçu) a few years ago and saw literally dozens of species of butterflies of every size and color. It was truly incredible. Not to mention the falls themselves and the rest of the flora and fauna. The rainforest is amazing!

Used to be like that between Myanmar and Laos when descending the Mekong from China to Thailand. These days you'd be lucky to see one: development on both sides, particularly clear-felling for rubber (the price of which has now crashed), has totally destroyed the biodiversity.

Re: Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch

#70

Post by everdrive »

Everything's in decline these days. We lack the political will to solve some of these large scale problems. This confuses people, since we do actually have the technology to solve a lot of these problems. But it's a coordination problem. How do you motivate millions of people across 2-3 countries to care about one particular issue? It sounds simple on paper, but for most people "their cup is already full" of other people's pet causes.

They're maxed out, and there's a limit to how many causes they can 1) be convinced to care about and 2) how many causes they actually have the impulse control to keep strict about.

Post reply on HN