The Insect Apocalypse (NYT) Summary
The New York Times has run an article entitled The Insect Apocalypse Is Here. It's horrifying in its implications, but remains nothing new in these times of the Anthropocene. I encourage you to read it.
Plastic has infiltrated the Mariana Trench. Large marine life has been reduced by half. The world is becoming more unified in its function of capital accumulation. So it should be no surprise that insects are now disappearing.
The article has a number of shocking figures.
In the United States, scientists recently found the population of monarch butterflies fell by 90 percent in the last 20 years, a loss of 900 million individuals; the rusty-patched bumblebee, which once lived in 28 states, dropped by 87 percent over the same period. With other, less-studied insect species, one butterfly researcher told me, “all we can do is wave our arms and say, ‘It’s not here anymore!’ ”
Insects occupy a vital level in the food web. They fulfill an essential link between plant matter and animal matter. Their numerical abundance (which is now coming to question) acts as a food source for a number of different animals. Without insects for food, these animals die off.
It doesn't take a population of one creature to reach 0 before the implications become dire. The population of one type of insect may need only to reach 75% before the population of its predator group (which is always necessarily less than the population of a prey group) begins to dwindle. So when the results of a German study show that the population of flying insects had decreased by 75% in just 27 years, the alarm should be ringing. Some shocking points from the article:
The German study found that, measured simply by weight, the overall abundance of flying insects in German nature reserves had decreased by 75 percent over just 27 years. If you looked at midsummer population peaks, the drop was 82 percent.
In Britain, as many as 30 to 60 percent of species were found to have diminishing ranges. Larger trends were harder to pin down, though a 2014 review in Science tried to quantify these declines by synthesizing the findings of existing studies and found that a majority of monitored species were declining, on average by 45 percent.
here were studies of other, better-understood species that suggested that the insects associated with them might be declining, too. People who studied fish found that the fish had fewer mayflies to eat. Ornithologists kept finding that birds that rely on insects for food were in trouble: eight in 10 partridges gone from French farmlands; 50 and 80 percent drops, respectively, for nightingales and turtledoves. Half of all farmland birds in Europe disappeared in just three decades.
It should be established without hesitation: the death of insects means the death of human civilization. Already, the Chinese use farm labor to pollinate trees and crops in the absence of bees. We will not be able to grow our food without insects. Animal life will die off. Civilization will become an increasingly solitary affair as we race to find ways to feed ourselves. Plant life will surround us, rotting away, with no insects able to consume the dead matter.
What is causing the decline? There are three theories: deforestation/development of human habitats, pollutants in the biosphere as a result of pesticide uses, climate change.
The increased eradication of habitable life for insects, replaced with concrete and human abodes, has a rippling effect on all insect life. Pollutants have been found in colonies far away from agricultural land. The article gives an example: some beehives do better in urban areas than the country side precisely because they're away from pesticides. Climate change has an effects on insect life as well. Tropical insects are vulnerable to even tiny changes in celsius. We've already experienced temperature changes, the effect of which is still only just now being understood.
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