Insect Population Crash – Largest Ever Worldwide Study Reveals Dramatic Decline

June 15th, 2020

By Nikki Harper

Staff Writer for Wake Up World

Research published in 2018 revealed that 41% of insect populations were in decline, with up to one third of all insect species at risk of extinction. New research revealed earlier this month – the Insect Atlas, published in the journal Science – has predicted a loss of 24% of land dwelling insect species within 30 years if the insect population crash continues at its current rate. That extrapolates to a 50% loss of land-dwelling insect biodiversity within 75 years.

That’s an extinction rate eight times higher than the equivalent rate for mammals, reptiles or birds. And yet, every ecosystem depends upon insect biodiversity for its very survival. Insects are food for other animals in the food chain. We depend on them to pollinate our crops. They act as natural pest control agents against insects which threaten our food supplies, and they act as natural recyclers of essential nutrients in our soils. Without healthy insect biodiversity, the planet simply cannot function as we know it.

Over the years, there have been numerous small scale, localized studies which have shown alarming results for insect populations. For example, one study found that a staggering 98% of ground insects had disappeared from Puerto Rico over a 35-year period [1]. Another study found that butterfly species fell by 58% on farmed land in England in just nine years [2].

What was lacking, however, was the collation of worldwide data to give us an overall picture – and that’s what the Insect Atlas has now provided. The work of researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Leipzig University (UL) and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the new research pulls long term data (stretching between 1925 and 2018) from 1676 sites around the world [3].

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