According to the world’s leading error experts, the world’s most important insect kingdom is ‘dying with a thousand cuts’.
Climate change, insecticides, herbicides, light pollution, invasive species and changes in agriculture and land use cause the earth to lose 1 percent to 2 percent of its insects each year, said David Wagner, entomologist at the University of Connecticut, lead author in a special package of 12 studies in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences written by 56 scientists from around the world.
The problem, sometimes called the insect apocalypse, is like a jigsaw puzzle. And scientists say that they do not yet have all the pieces, and therefore they struggle to understand its scope and complexity and to show the world and do something.
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Wagner said scientists need to determine if the insect loss is greater than in other species.
“There’s a reason to be more concerned,” he said, because insects “are the target of attacks” with insecticides, herbicides and light pollution.
According to co-author and entomologist from the University of Illinois, May Berenbaum, a winner of the national medal of science, a decline in insects 30 years ago is similar to climate change because the methods around the extent, the rate (of loss) to determine, was difficult. “
Important for the environment
To make matters worse, in many cases people hate bugs, even though they pollinate many of the world’s crops, are crucial to the food chain and get rid of waste, Berenbaum said.
Insects “are absolutely the substance with which Mother Nature and the tree of life are built,” Wagner said.
Honeybees and monarch butterflies are two well-known species that best illustrate insect problems and declines, he said. Honeybees have declined drastically due to diseases, parasites, insecticides, herbicides and lack of food.
Dryer weather, driven by climate change in the western U.S., means fewer dairy crops for butterflies to eat, Wagner said. And changes in American agriculture are removing weeds and flowers they need for nectar.
“We are creating a giant biological desert, except for soybeans and wheat in a giant area in the Midwest,” he said.
Monday’s scientific articles do not contain new data, but rather a large and incomplete picture of a problem that is beginning to attract attention.
Scientists have identified one million insect species, while another four million have yet to be discovered, Berenbaum said.
University of Delaware entomologist Doug Tallamy, who was not part of the study, said they highlighted how the world has spent billions of dollars ‘over the past thirty years’ finding new ways to kill insects and pennies working to preserve it. ‘
“The good news is that, with the exception of climate change, individuals can do much to prevent subsidence,” Tallamy said in an email. “This is a global problem with a grassroots solution.”