Rapid insect biomass decline observed in 27-year German study.

Jake Arave

Jake Arave

Ethologist
Registered Senior Member
New study published by plos demonstrates a 75% decline in flying-insect biomass over the last 27 years. No confirmed cause as of now, though it's likely a multitude of factors including habitat destruction, global warming, land use are to blame. The use of pesticide is also mentioned briefly.

Source:
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809

In closing I have to say, this is EXTREMELY serious news. The loss of biomass is severe and rapidly changing, the effects of which may cause a cascade destroying or disrupting food webs globally. Be good to our planet everyone.
 
iceaura said:
And note how near a miss that was - without that one book, it's possible that nothing would have been done.

There's an older thread on this, sort of, over in Earth science.
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Oh I'm sure, it's been noted for quite a while that a decline has been there, but this particular study is new and is mostly an evaluation of ecological impacts.
 
Jake Arave said:
Oh I'm sure, it's been noted for quite a while that a decline has been there, but this particular study is new and is mostly an evaluation of ecological impacts.
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Yes, and iirc it's mentioned in the older thread, over in Earth Science.
This forum seems more appropriate anyway - maybe combine them here?
 
Jake Arave said:
In closing I have to say, this is EXTREMELY serious news. The loss of biomass is severe and rapidly changing, the effects of which may cause a cascade destroying or disrupting food webs globally. Be good to our planet everyone.
Click to expand...

Is it indicative of the situation in the US right now that my only thought is... "bring on the end of Humanity"?
 
Kittamaru said:
Is it indicative of the situation in the US right now that my only thought is... "bring on the end of Humanity"?
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It seems that way, only time will tell. It's almost poetic in a way how unalterable the current state of affairs seems to be, which leads us to a crossroad where our destruction seems inevitable. At that juncture, we're the only ones we can blame.
 
It sounds like the beginning of a science fiction book.

This is really scary. At what point does the decrease in insect population lead to a large scale collapse of the entire biome?
 
origin said:
It sounds like the beginning of a science fiction book.

This is really scary. At what point does the decrease in insect population lead to a large scale collapse of the entire biome?
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It's hard to know, we're not even sure it will lead to large scale collapse, but we do know that we're in the midst of a large scale extinction event that we can attribute mostly due to human interference. These mass dyings may not even cause a blip on our radar as we may be able to live despite them. Lab-grown food and the like. The thing that is more devastating however, as a result of our own behavior, we can already get a glimpse of the future for our planet using predictive models of population decline for other species - including but not limited to insects. Needless to say the future looks grim, food will become sparse, and countries without the wealth to buy what remains will be destroyed by famine, slowly at first, but it will spread rapidly and end in massive human casualty. It's likely that there will be a war for resources at this juncture in the future.
 
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