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Related: About this forumInsects Are Dying En Masse. Here's Why That's Actually Horrible.
There have been warning signs for years about plummeting insect populations worldwide, but the extent of the potentially catastrophic crisis had not been well-understood until now.
The first global scientific review of insect population decline was published this week in the journal Biological Conservation and the findings are shocking, its authors said.
More than 40 percent of insect species are dwindling globally and a third of species are endangered, concluded the peer-reviewed study, which analyzed 73 historical reports on insect population declines.
Chillingly, the total mass of insects is falling by 2.5 percent annually, the reviews authors said. If the decline continues at this rate, insects could be wiped off the face of the Earth within a century.
It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none, study co-author Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, an environmental biologist at the University of Sydney, Australia, told The Guardian.
If insect species losses cannot be halted, this will have catastrophic consequences for both the planets ecosystems and for the survival of mankind, Sánchez-Bayo added.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/insect-population-decline-extinction_us_5c611921e4b0f9e1b17f097d
democratisphere
(17,235 posts)Mass extinction continues at an extremely rapid rate.
at140
(6,110 posts)Some residents in my condo building do not remove garbage often.
That invites roaches. I take out garbage every day. I see roaches
in common area and one of them will find a way into my unit occasionally.
Disgusting!
Shell_Seas
(3,335 posts)at140
(6,110 posts)With MAD (mutually assured destruction) cockroaches will surely survive and feast on all the roasted rotting flesh.
Blues Heron
(5,939 posts)you'd have to be very shallow to think "fewer bugs- yay"
Of course it's horrible!
Shell_Seas
(3,335 posts)Quixote1818
(28,959 posts)I was wondering how the reptiles were surviving?
Comatose Sphagetti
(836 posts)It's shocking: They used to be very common.
Did some research last night and it looks like decrease in available nesting sites and increased use of insecticides is partly to blame