[HN Gopher] More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total ...
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More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect
biomass (2017)
Author : doener
Score : 191 points
Date : 2023-03-18 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.plos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.plos.org)
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| There are sampling methodology issues with this type of studies.
|
| The main conclusion is that insecticide chemicals used for
| agriculture are pretty effective at killing insects (especially
| Neonicotinoid but probably also other classes).
|
| A more rigorous sampling methodology would produce a different
| picture, with huge differences depending on the distance from
| highly cultivated areas.
|
| This is not apocalypse, this is actionable, invertebrates species
| populations can rebound at a surprising speed in less poisonous
| ecosystem.
|
| Politics should act to ban some classes of insecticides.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| It feels like this is also where natural selection and
| evolution kick in. Surely insects will evolve resistance to
| insecticides given their ubiquity, rapid life cycle, and
| prodigious ability to reproduce?
| londons_explore wrote:
| There are always some chemicals that evolving resistance to
| is tricky.
|
| Humans are particularly poor at lava resistance... Despite
| groups of humans having had access to lava for millions of
| years.
| kuhewa wrote:
| Its a red queen situation though because the agricultural
| industry is constantly coming up with ways to get around
| resistance when it does appear
| 300bps wrote:
| _Politics should act to ban some classes of insecticides._
|
| And people need to be educated so they don't hire pesticide
| companies to bomb their entire yard every year with insecticide
| because they want fewer mosquitos and other bugs _outside_.
| huuhee3 wrote:
| This. I can't understand people who want their plot of land
| to be without natural life. Might as well sell the house and
| move to a flat instead.
| ninkendo wrote:
| I don't think anyone wants their plot of land to be without
| natural life. Maybe without mosquitos though.
| zamadatix wrote:
| If that were the only difference between a house and a flat
| then there would be reason to be confused. Few chose a flat
| vs a house mainly based on how much they love nature
| itself.
| is_true wrote:
| It's mostly mosquitoes. I don't like them but all the
| plants I have are from the local environment to help
| insects and birds.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This is the biggest factor I've personally seen.
|
| My house and neighbor don't spray. I chave a corn field
| behind me, which I think is BT because I don't see them
| spray. We have plenty of bumble bees, beetles, and other
| insects. Although I will say there are fewer butterflies than
| I remeber as a kid.
|
| My in-laws live in a development where they and almost
| everyone else sprays. There are very few insects. Still
| plenty of annoying yellow jackets though.
| zbrozek wrote:
| Dunno. I'm one of the people who don't want mosquitos, though
| I don't care about bugs which don't suck my blood. I have a
| fan-powered mosquito trap which seems to work well enough. No
| chemistry.
| christophilus wrote:
| We put up mosquito traps. They emit a bit of CO2 or
| something like that to attract the little pests. Seems to
| work pretty well for us, and we still have a really healthy
| insect population in our yard more generally. It helps that
| we leave our leafs around the trees and we always cordon of
| a section of the lawn to leave unmowed all spring and
| summer.
| giantg2 wrote:
| There's always BTI, which so far is specific just to
| mosquitoes (biological, not chemical).
| chucklenorris wrote:
| What's the alternative? The public is much more afraid about
| GMO crops than dying insects and the farmers clearly don't want
| to be the losers in this situation.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Yeah, this is unfortunate. Same story with Nuclear power.
| dcchambers wrote:
| > Politics should act to ban some classes of insecticides.
|
| My fear (in the US anyway) is that this will never happen
| because of one simple reason: Iowa Corn Farmers.
|
| Presidential elections in the US start and end for many
| candidates in one state. Iowa. That's where the first primary
| election is held.
|
| And the key to winning Iowa is the make the corn lobby and corn
| farmers happy.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Presidential elections in the US start and end for many
| candidates in one state."
|
| Eh, this isn't the biggest issue. If it was, we would have
| had bills for this that were vetoed. There has to also be
| support for banning this in the legislature, which depends on
| many other states.
| lasc4r wrote:
| Corn doesn't get much insecticide, herbicide yes.
| myshpa wrote:
| "The chemical compound glyphosate, the world's most widely
| used herbicide, can weaken the immune systems of insects
| ..."
|
| https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/ingredient-in-common-
| weed-...
|
| Negative Effects of Common Herbicides on Non-target
| Invertebrates
|
| https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.
| c...
|
| Direct and Indirect Effects of Herbicides on Insect
| Herbivores in Rice, Oryza sativa
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6502833/
| testfoobar wrote:
| Iowa has been replaced by South Carolina. But New Hampshire
| law has introduced a race condition.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_presidential_pri.
| .. "New Hampshire state law[6] stipulates that the
| presidential primary shall be on the second Tuesday in March
| (the date when town meetings and non-partisan municipal
| elections are traditionally held), but that the Secretary of
| State must, if necessary, change the date to ensure that the
| New Hampshire primary will take place at least seven days
| before any "similar election" in any other state. The Iowa
| caucuses are not considered to be a similar election. In
| recent election cycles, the New Hampshire primary has taken
| place the week after the Iowa caucus."
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-vote-to-
| chan... "PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- The Democratic Party on
| Saturday approved the reordering of its 2024 presidential
| primary, replacing Iowa with South Carolina in the leadoff
| spot as part of a major shake-up meant to empower Black and
| other minority voters critical to its base of support."
| pakyr wrote:
| Only by the Democrats. Iowa is still first in the nation
| for Republicans, and most of those Iowa corn farmers are
| voting for them anyway.
| myshpa wrote:
| A third of that corn is used for animal agriculture as feed,
| a third for production of ethanol (environmentally worse than
| gas anyway), and just one third is for human consumption [0].
|
| We could easily eliminate 2/3 of that crop (by switching to
| electric and plant based) and 2/3 of associated
| pesticides/herbicides as well.
|
| [0] https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019/07/29/corn-americas-
| lar...
| kuhewa wrote:
| Not so easy considering it requires decimatation of corn
| belt state GDP
| njarboe wrote:
| The Democrats have voted to change the first primaries (I
| know Iowa has a caucus) to North Carolina. That should change
| things a bit.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| *South Carolina.
| giantg2 wrote:
| What they (and others) should be doing is looking at
| nationwide same day primaries to remove the bias, not just
| shift it around.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Fucking thank you. I can't believe the DNC lets their
| absurd primary rules stand year after year.
| Superdelegates are still a thing too, even after the
| Hillary/Bernie debacle. Tuck that one away in your memory
| because it'll become relevant again 25 years down the
| road, even though everyone thought they were abolished
| after 2016.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| What debacle? The more popular candidate won
| nradov wrote:
| Perhaps, but we'll never know for sure considering that
| the DNC leadership manipulated the process to tilt the
| scales in favor of their preferred candidate.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Yes, I agree Hillary would have won no matter what. That
| doesn't mean the DNC primary system wasn't rigged. It
| still is. Staggered primaries mean earlier elections
| influence later elections and superdelegates allow
| individuals to steal the votes of voters for themselves.
|
| This isn't like the 2020 election conspiracies. DNC
| primary rules are demonstrably unfair with no benefit
| other than to allow party elites to override voter
| choices.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| You mean the party is allowed to influence the selection
| of the candidate that will represent them? And put their
| thumb on the scales against populist candidates from the
| fringe with rabidly delusional adherents?
|
| One could argue that the GOP primary process would be
| better off with superdelegates in order to avoid the
| tendency to nominate fringe weirdos with absurd populist
| policies.
| NLPaep wrote:
| A fair vote should be held. Showing one candidate with a
| massive lead, even if artificial, can influence voters.
| testfoobar wrote:
| The point of staggered primaries is to ensure that the
| eventual winner gets the majority of funds for the
| general election.
|
| Weaker candidates are identified early and fall out of
| the race - leaving the eventual winner with a larger
| donor base.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Weaker candidates are identified early and fall out of
| the race"
|
| Not really true. They are only the weaker candidates _in
| those states_. You have plenty of attractive candidates
| in other states drop out before those primaries.
| testfoobar wrote:
| You can approach this as a statistical sampling problem.
| Out of a field N candidates, one will become the
| representative of the party in the national election.
| Your optimization challenge is to identify the winner
| with high confidence while conducting the fewest number
| of tests. Each test exacts a financial and political cost
| on the eventual candidate. To have the most viable
| candidate in the general election, you want to do the
| fewest number of tests that give you the final result
| with high confidence.
|
| The staggered system of primaries does just that.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The staggered system of primaries does just that."
|
| It actually causes the devaluation of the votes of later
| primaries. Due to the difference in concerns of different
| geographic areas, you would have a shitty sample based on
| the current line-up.
|
| "Your optimization challenge is to identify the winner
| with high confidence while conducting the fewest number
| of tests."
|
| If that were the case, you wouldn't even do primaries and
| you'd just rely on the surveys, which arguably have
| better sampling (primaries are biases toward the vocal
| minority due to the low turn outs and not necessarily the
| overall voter pool).
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| No one wants to remove the bias, they want to shift the
| bias so they win.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| The argument I've heard for Iowa being the first state is
| it somewhat levels the playing field for candidates. Iowa
| is a small enough state you can drive around it and meet
| people, without having the budget for a bunch of flights.
| The media market is also smaller and thus cheaper.
| BMc2020 wrote:
| _"There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks
| when decades happen."_ --Lenin
|
| The crash will always seem years away right up until the moment
| it is here.
| zabzonk wrote:
| annecdata: my very nice cleaning lady saw a bumble bee on her
| allotment yesterday, and told me about it. 10 years ago it would
| not be worth mentioning - they all come out in early spring.
|
| this is in lincoln, uk
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Perhaps loss of insects is an indicator we got absorbed into a
| simulation.
|
| Just kidding.
| laen wrote:
| I can remember a decade ago having to clean my car's windshield
| each time I filled up at the gas station. Now-a-days in both the
| US and Germany I find it a rarity - my wipers can generally get
| the one or two splats. You'll notice a bit more on the country
| roads vs interstate/autobahn but such an alarming difference
| overall.
| joss82 wrote:
| Is it the same car, though?
|
| For efficiency, newer cars have become more profiled and glide
| through the air where older cars were more boxy.
| mikestew wrote:
| As you'll see in a moment, the question/assertion has come up
| before:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31947758
| rqtwteye wrote:
| That's very true.
| 1attice wrote:
| Hear me out: sure, we denuded the planet of life, but we're
| _ushering new life into being with GPT-N_
|
| /s
|
| If there are future generations, the priorities of this era will
| be inscrutable
| schnebbau wrote:
| At some point in the future the consequences of our actions are
| going to start emerging, and shit is going to get real for
| society.
|
| Where in the world would be a good place to be living when this
| happens? Probably a relatively small, relatively undeveloped
| island in the pacific right? (if it isn't underwater by that
| point)
| potsandpans wrote:
| my escapist fantasy exists deep in the sticks of northern
| vermont / maine. not too many people, necessary cold seasons,
| relatively decent hardiness zones.
| huuhee3 wrote:
| Somewhere with lots of natural resources, not too hot and few
| people. Alaska perhaps? Siberia would work if the local
| government wasn't so crazy.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Alaska in the summer is the one place where there mostly
| definitely isn't a shortage of flying insects.
|
| I'd never seen anything like it.
| pvaldes wrote:
| To start, In Germany
|
| Alternative universe title: After several decades German Insects
| learned not to keep falling on Malaise traps, or local birds
| learned how to ravage the traps and take profit of it
|
| Another alternative universe title title: After taxonomists
| vanished insect biomass is flying under the radar and being
| severely underestimated
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I had a chuckle a few days ago in my local bookshop when I saw
| next to each other books on: -the insect apocalypse -how to eat
| insects
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It's fertilizers but it's also declining biodiversity. We're
| razing down natural habitats and covering it up with other
| things. When you dig up the prairies and build McMansions with
| decorative grass at best, turf or concrete at worst, all the
| native insects go to die, and so does the rest of the food chain.
| inductive_magic wrote:
| Can someone here point me towards the most current
| literature/sources on this topic? I've seen Beneckes EU-
| parliament talk and found the numbers presented there (probably
| the same ones you can see in the paper) very concerning.
|
| What does figure 4 look like in 2023? Where can I subscribe to
| stay up to date? What can companies in the ML/analytics space do
| to help?
| lamontcg wrote:
| > What can companies in the ML/analytics space do to help?
|
| plaster the internet with chatbots doing fake engagement in
| order to swing political bias the other direction. the other
| side of the argument is already doing it.
| tokai wrote:
| Check out papers that cites this one.
|
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1377111639896250698...
| debacle wrote:
| > What can companies in the ML/analytics space do to help?
|
| ...nothing?
|
| Contrary to very wishful thinking, technology is not the tool
| to solve all problems, and it will never be a replacement for
| civic engagement.
| FredPret wrote:
| Technology != Comp Sci. We are a technological species in
| that we evolved with fire and clothing, and _after_ tool use.
|
| For any mess we find ourselves in, the solution - if there is
| one - will involve tech and engineering.
| jitlle wrote:
| I think that comment was intended as a parody of what a
| absurdly stereotypical HN user might write.
| samstave wrote:
| Well, one could hack Monsanto and find all the secret emails
| which talk about how bad glyphosate is for the actual
| environment-eco-system that used to be in balance with
| insects.
| mywacaday wrote:
| We don't have to hack, why not have and FDA like model
| where all information has to be made available or
| discoverable during an audit.
| frontierkodiak wrote:
| We don't have the data to make much more than directional
| claims re: macro trends in insect biodiversity. Ecological
| monitoring is tedious and labor-intensive; insects are simply
| too minute, too diverse, and too numerous to be surveilled at
| scale. Scale is necessary to make multi-decadal claims across
| millions of taxa; this is probably why some of the most
| rigorous studies^1 have produced findings that complicate the
| idea of an insect armageddon.
|
| I'm working on a tool to make insect (focused esp. on
| pollinators) monitoring 10,000x cheaper. We do not currently
| understand the scale of insect declines, much less are we able
| to design targeted interventions. In the past decades,
| mammalian and avian declines were largely reversed, mostly
| thanks to ambitious multiyear monitoring efforts that enabled
| limited conservation resources to be allocated efficiently.
|
| We should replicate this model with insects. I plan to make
| this possible by radically reducing the cost of data.
|
| I've been toying with this idea for a few years, but I finally
| made the leap to building my startup^2 full-time a few months
| back (coming from entomology/ecology). Hoping for an alpha
| release & demo study this summer.
|
| I'm happy to chat with anyone interested. Especially interested
| to meet those working and funding in this space.
|
| 1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1269-4 2.
| https://polli.ai _Note: This site is austere (I blame CUDA
| troubles for stealing my time this month). Expect something
| more representative by April._
| Xeoncross wrote:
| The way many cities, farms, processing plants, resorts, houses,
| etc... spray regularly, I think some people are targeting 100%
| decline in flying insect biomass. I hope they don't get their
| wish.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| from past discussions here, it appears to be a) real, and b) due
| mainly to 24 hours lighting and destruction of common ground
| where reproduction happens
|
| I predict huge numbers, but of far fewer species in a hundred
| years..
| CydeWeys wrote:
| You think it's mainly those factors and not simply greater use
| of insecticides?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| yeah - all manner of agricultural and urban poisons ..
| without complicating it I went with the simple "destruction
| of common ground"
|
| Silent Spring is here
| Laaas wrote:
| Far fewer _current_ species, and some new species.
| davidkuennen wrote:
| Having lived in the countryside in Germany my whole life (34
| years), I noticed a dramatic decline of insects.
|
| When I was a child, there were so many butterflies, bees and more
| in the summer. Today I barely see them anymore.
| looping__lui wrote:
| +1 to that. Car windshields are clean today after a long ride
| on the autobahn.
|
| I have apple trees in my garden and if you dont physically
| shield the apples, wasps and other insects will just eat them
| up in no time. Nearby there are enormous apple tree fields.
| Nothing touches their apples. I wonder why.
| mgraupner wrote:
| Fellow German here. I go out for mountain biking and gravel
| rides a lot. Every time I pass agriculture fields in summer,
| there is no "noise" anymore, it's totally quiet. No birds, no
| insects, nothing, it almost seems dead. As soon as I come to
| places where nature can be itself, there is an abundance of
| sounds, nature is thriving. Unfortunately the former prevails
| the latter several times.
|
| I guess I don't need any studies of WHAT is killing these
| insects...
| hermitcrab wrote:
| If you have a garden you can let a little bit of it go wild.
| One garden isn't much, but millions of gardens with wild
| patches can make a difference.
| mgraupner wrote:
| That's exactly what I do. 1/2 of my garden is wild with
| wild flowers, habitats for insects and birds and on the
| other half no pesticides are used, I just weed by hand.
| Great diversion if you're stuck with a programming
| problem...
| Jensson wrote:
| Remember getting so many mosquito bites, but then after growing
| up you almost never see mosquitos any more in the same
| location. Was many years since I last saw one now.
| everydayentropy wrote:
| Yup! I always thought it was me staying inside more as I got
| older, but I rarely see butterflies and bumble bees anymore.
|
| This terrifies me more than climate alarmism.
| m463 wrote:
| what got me is that over the past 10 or more years, I've
| continually seen dead bees on the ground.
|
| and I think... what a small creature to *notice* on the
| ground. How many dead bees escape my notice? there must be a
| LOT.
| lasc4r wrote:
| Do you think insecticides are altering where the bees die?
| Otherwise it sounds like you're describing a large
| population of former bees.
| eutectic wrote:
| Bees live less than a year, so the number of dead bees can
| surely only be used as an indicator of changes on around
| that time-scale or shorter. Eventually fewer bees means
| fewer dead bees.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| You don't think it might be related?
| quacked wrote:
| They're related in that both are downstream of
| industrialization, but changing climates aren't lessening
| insect biodiversity as much as overuse of various chemicals
| are.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Warmer climate should be better for insect populations.
| This is mostly about pesticide overuse.
| adammarples wrote:
| Insects can be very sensitive to drought
| hermitcrab wrote:
| And habitat loss? Crop monocultures are not great for
| most insects (or animals or birds).
| [deleted]
| samstave wrote:
| This is interesting to me ; I am a regular cyclist and I
| commented recently on the fact that when I was a kid, there were
| always 'clouds' of gnats in the evenings that typically swarmed
| around and you would bike through them...
|
| I havent encountered a swarm of little gnat in a very long time.
|
| However, I blame this on glyphosate which decimated the insect
| environments.
|
| The other thing, in the early 1980s in Lake Tahoe, there was a
| grove of trees near my elementary school where the Monarch
| Butterflies would congregate and an entire pine tree would be
| completely blanketed in them - havent seen that in decades.
|
| Milkweed is their only food and egg-laying spot (on the underside
| of the leaves) - but milkweed has been eradicated with glyphosate
| and thus no more Monarchs.
| logi2mus wrote:
| When I was young the farmers made hay, no it is only Silage. So
| any moth which was attached to hay is now dead.
| melling wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
|
| Climate change, plastics, antibiotic resistance, huge budget
| deficits, etc. We create all sorts of problems in society. We
| can't seem to connect the dots...
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vinyl-chloride-ohio-train-derai...
|
| Our inflation problem was avoidable too but everyone wanted cheap
| money for way too long.
| ck2 wrote:
| It's simply about profit with cutting any corners for more.
|
| It's one thing when a single person does it, entirely something
| else when millionaires and billionaires do it at a corporate
| level.
|
| Cruise Ships are burning bunker fuel to this day, dumping tons
| of toxic mess into the oceans and atmosphere.
|
| Fracking burn off has been going on for over two decades
| (around for a century but didn't take off until 20 years ago)
|
| Super dooper nasty stuff being dumped into all the freshwater
| in the USA and around the world.
|
| People see climate change as linear but just like pollution
| buildup, it's exponential.
|
| Isn't the "point of no return" projected around 2040? What if
| it's really 2030 but even if 2040, what exactly is going to
| change in that time?
| DesiLurker wrote:
| Right, As I often say, tragedy of commons will turn out to be
| our great filter. Not just at individual level but every level
| up including city, state & nations. It works great for when the
| problems faced are aligned with individual short term best
| interests not so well when collective action is needed.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| regulated and science-based Forestry seems to have destroyed
| thousands of years of forest growth in less than a hundred
| years of English command, here in California. Nothing about
| it was 'commons' .. Secondly, the largest polluter of the
| Pacific Ocean has been the US Navy, on shore and off.. also
| fully 'not commons'
|
| Let's ignore the politics and look with a science lense at
| what is really going on?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's not just tragedy of the commons, it's also a lack of
| collective will to not keep borrowing from the future and
| kicking the can. Debt, the biome, economic systems depending
| on never ending growth and an ever growing population
| pyramid. There is no incentive to think long term and
| preserve for tomorrow.
|
| This will catch up to us eventually, and ignorance will be
| plead.
| dustymcp wrote:
| Anecdote time, i drove home last summer to my parents they live
| in the middle of nowhere with farmland all around and i remember
| distinctly when i was a kid how many bugs that would be squashed,
| coming around now there is very little compared..
|
| I dont know much about pesticides but that seems like a slippery
| slope.
| b3nji wrote:
| Now what are the elites going to get is to eat?!
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Aside: I fairly recently got into photographing bugs with a macro
| lens and flash. It opens up a whole new world that you can't
| normally see with the naked eye. Also you can do it in your
| garden or local park, no need to fly to the Serengeti. Insects
| (and arachnids) are amazing.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Flying somewhere is only adding to the environmental issues
| anyway....
| [deleted]
| jcq3 wrote:
| So what? Old species die and new species born. Its just nature...
| fredoliveira wrote:
| Tell me you don't understand how ecosystems collapse without
| telling me you don't know how ecosystems collapse.
| csdvrx wrote:
| IDK, if it turns out it's not due to insecticides, I think
| that's a valid point.
|
| The world is always changing. I may be philosophically wrong
| to want to lock it in its present state.
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