INSECT ELEGY

    I indicated yesterday (see the post below) that I would attempt to get back to this blogging business. So, in case you missed it, here is some information about a news item that was widely circulated in late October. It has to do with the dramatic decline in the number of insects.

Something Else to Worry About

    Even those not concerned with environmental issues could hardly avoid the many articles written over the last few years about bees, Colony Collapse Disorder and neonicotinoids. A new scientific study indicates that bees may not be the only insects in danger of elimination. In short, it may not be a good idea to encourage your kids to major in entomology since there may soon be a shortage of specimens to study.

    The recent news stories are based on this article which is found in a respected journal that is freely available to you: “More Than 75 Percent Decline Over 27 Years in Total Flying Insect Biomass in Protected Areas,” Caspar A. Hallmann, et al. PLOS ONE, Oct. 18, 2017.

I will provide at the bottom of this post some samples of the reactions to this report.

The Windshield Phenomenon

   If you are not inclined to slog through a scientific study then you should have a look at this book which tells the same story in a very effective and readable way. I happened upon it a few years ago, probably because I had read the author’s Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo. (see my earlier post back in late May on the subject of cuckoos.) It has been widely circulated among my friends who have all enjoyed it and, of course, my friends are all sophisticated and discerning readers.

    Still, you are likely not convinced that a book about moths would be very interesting and I agree that it would probably be more popular if the title was Butterfly Ballet, The Majesty of Monarchs or especially The Birds and the Bees. Even the author notes that “Moths have long been unloved.” (p.100.) Trust me and my friends and have a look at it. Here is a sample that explains the title and which also basically indicates that the subject of the book has to do with the disappearance of insects.

“This means, of course, that in the dark there are far, far more moths out and about than ever there are butterflies during the daytime; it’s just that we don’t see them. Or, at least, we didn’t, until the invention of the automobile. The headlight beams of a speeding car on a muggy summer’s night in the countryside, turning the moth’s into snowflakes and crowding them together the faster you went, in the manner of a telephoto lens, meant that the true startling scale of their numbers was suddenly apparent, not least as they plastered the headlights and the windscreen until driving became impossible, and you had to stop the car to wipe the glass surfaces clean. (I know there are many other insects active at night as well, but let the moths stand proxy for the rest.) Of all the myriad displays of abundance in the natural world in Britain, the moth snowstorm was the most extraordinary, as it only became perceptible in the age of the internal combustion engine. Yet now, after but a short century or existence, it is gone.” p.102

Sources:

“Warning of 'Ecological Armageddon' After Dramatic Plunge in Insect Numbers: Three-quarters of Flying Insects in Nature Reserves Across Germany Have Vanished in 25 Years, With Serious Implications for all life on Earth, Scientists say,”  Damian Carrington, The Guardian, Oct. 18, 2017

“The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.”

“Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.”

“The research, published in the journal Plos One, is based on the work of dozens of amateur entomologists across Germany who began using strictly standardised ways of collecting insects in 1989. Special tents called malaise traps were used to capture more than 1,500 samples of all flying insects at 63 different nature reserves.”

“The fact that the samples were taken in protected areas makes the findings even more worrying, said Caspar Hallmann at Radboud University, also part of the research team: “All these areas are protected and most of them are well-managed nature reserves. Yet, this dramatic decline has occurred.”

"Flying Insects Are Disappearing From German Skies: The Country Has Lost Three-quarters of its Aerial Insects  Since 1989’” Nature, Oct. 18, 2017

‘This is Very Alarming!’: Flying Insects Vanish From Nature Preserves," Ben Guarino, Oct. 18, The Washington Post, Oct. 18, 2017

“Biologists call this the windshield phenomenon. It's a symptom, they say, of a vanishing population.”

“If you like to eat nutritious fruits and vegetables, you should thank an insect. If you like salmon, you can thank a tiny fly that the salmon eat when they're young,” Black said. “The whole fabric of our planet is built on plants and insects and the relationship between the two.”

“Insects Are In Serious Trouble: In Western Germany, Populations of Flying Insects Have Fallen by Around 80 Percent in the Last Three Decades”, Ed Young, Atlantic, Oct. 19, 2017

Here is a Canadian sample:

“Inside the Mysterious Decline of Earth's Insects: Insects are by far the Most Populous Species on the Planet, But They Seem to be Disappearing. Why Aren't More People Concerned?”,  Leslie Anthony, Canadian Geographic, Oct. 21, 2017.

This is an article by the author of The Moth Snowstorm:

“A Giant Insect Ecosystem is Collapsing Due to Humans. It's a Catastrophe

Insects Have Triumphed for Hundreds of Millions of Years in Every Habitat but the Ocean. Their Success is Unparalleled, Which Makes Their Disappearance all the more Alarming,"

Michael McCarthy, The Guardian,  Oct. 21, 2017.

“Furthermore, insects form the base of thousands upon thousands of food chains, and their disappearance is a principal reason why Britain’s farmland birds have more than halved in number since 1970. Some declines have been catastrophic: the grey partridge, whose chicks fed on the insects once abundant in cornfields, and the charming spotted flycatcher, a specialist predator of aerial insects, have both declined by more than 95%, while the red-backed shrike, which feeds on big beetles, became extinct in Britain in the 1990s.”

“It has taken us a lot of time to understand this for two reasons: one cultural, one scientific. Firstly, we generally do not care for insects (bees and butterflies excepted). Even wildlife lovers are fixed on vertebrates, on creatures of fur and feather and especially the “charismatic megafauna”, and in the population as a whole there is even less sympathy for the fate of the chitin-skeletoned little things that creep and crawl; our default reaction is a shudder. Fewer bugs in the world? Many would cheer.”

Secondly, for the overwhelming majority of insect species, there is no monitoring or measurement of numbers taking place. It is a practical impossibility: in the UK alone there are about 24,500 insect species – about 1,800 species of bugs, 4,000 species of beetles, 7,000 species of flies and another 7,000 species of bees, wasps and ants – and most are unknown to all but a few specialists. So their vast and catastrophic decline, at last perceptible, has crept up on us; and when first we began to perceive it, it was not through statistics, but through anecdote.”

“The earliest anecdotal impression of decline was through what is sometimes termed the windscreen phenomenon (or windshield if you live in the US): time was, especially in the summer, when any long automobile journey would result in a car windscreen that was insect-spattered. But then, not so much. Two years ago I wrote a book focusing on this curious happening, but I gave it a different name: I called it the moth snowstorm, referring to the moths which on summer nights in my childhood might cluster in such numbers that they would pack a speeding car’s headlight beams like snowflakes in a blizzard.”

“But the point about the moth snowstorm was this: it had gone. I personally realised it had disappeared, and began writing about it as a journalist, in the year 2000; but it became obvious from talking to people who had also observed it that its disappearance dated further back, probably to about the 1970s and 1980s. And the fact that an entire large-scale phenomenon such as this had simply ceased to exist pointed inescapably to one grim conclusion: though unnoticed by the world at large, a whole giant ecosystem was collapsing. The insect world was falling apart.”