Keith Sockman, associate professor of biology at UNC-Chapel Hill, quantified the abundance of flying insects during 15 seasons between 2004 and 2024 on a subalpine meadow in Colorado, a site with 38 years of weather data and minimal direct human impact. He discovered an average annual decline of 6.6% in insect abundance, amounting to a 72.4% drop over the 20-year period. The study also found that this steep decline is associated with rising summer temperatures.
“Insects have a unique, if inauspicious position in the biodiversity crisis due to the ecological services, such as nutrient cycling and pollination, they provide and to their vulnerability to environmental change,” Sockman said. “Insects are necessary for terrestrial and fresh-water ecosystems to function.”
Mosquitoes appear to be fine though, so there’s that.
Anybody needs spiders? Seattle has orb weever spiders living everywhere.
Anyone old enough to remember driving down a highway and every stop for gas included a 5 minute intensive windshield wash scrubbing to get all the bugs off? Sometimes you used to have to clean your grill and radiator. I remember.
I just came back from a friends cottage and we had exactly one bug on the windshield. Otherwise the car was clean.
Friends, we are going to have a very rough time. We fucked up bad.
Did a 4000 mile round trip this summer and barely any bugs. Wild.
I have a memory of a road trip in the 90s where we must have driven through a whole swarm, probably somewhere in western Montana, because it almost sounded like hail as they were splatting on the windshield. Sorry, maybe I killed them all that day.
OMG, it’s all your fault!
Well, either that or the nicotinoids we sprayed everywhere. We’ll leave it to the judge sponsored by Monsanto/Bayer to decide if it was millions of tons of carcinogenic pesticides applied liberally over millions of acres of farmland, or your 90’s Montana road trip.
I always said the end will come not from nuclear weapons, or solar flairs, asteroids etc. it will come from something that’s seemingly silent on the news and popular perception, but that will destabilize the whole system we depended on. It’s not just bugs that are vanishing at unprecedented rate, but all species.
Solar Flares - big tongues of radiation licking our planetary ball.
Solar Flairs: Looking fabulous and sparkly while the above happens to club music you can sing and dance to.
I like your version better.
I drive 500 km a week, every ones in a while I get a splatter large enough to bother me. Even after 2 or 3 weeks my car still looks fine
They’re not “untouched” scientists are finding microplastic in the most remote areas. I have no doubt that we are affecting every inch of the planet.
No, of course, no ecosystem is untouched. I don’t know what microplastics would have to do with declining insect numbers, but I do know, as stated in the article, that a changing climate certainly has an impact.
The solution to pollution is dilution… until everything is pollution!
But according to my coworkers, there are tons of insects. Too many. Good riddance.
I just keep thinking about the collapse of our agriculture as this continues.
This suggests to me that the key issue behind insect collapse is climate change.
Not necessarily. Pollutants spread far more than we often think could also be an explanation
The article claims warmer summers as a main cause
