Where have all the insects gone?
Where have all the insects gone?
It's a pretty good "where'd all the insects go?" piece from the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/e7403c08-b50e-4b16-861f-fe27d7b16060
Personally I find the FT paywall easier to get around than the archive.ph captcha.
Anyway, the insect apocalypse seems to have hit my house this year in southern Canada. For the first time I can remember, the dragonflies didn't show up. Hardly any mosquitos. So far no wasps are trying to get in my screen door as they normally do in late summer. I haven't really noticed the crickets and fireflies, but now that I think of it it seems like there haven't been many. Even ants seem to be in short supply compared to normal. It's pretty weird.
Locally I'm surrounded by forest that hasn't been disturbed in any new ways recently. Must be the climate change I guess.
The insects have gone gangbusters this year in the Upper Midwest. This follows 3 summers ('21-'23) which had abnormally low insect volume owing to severe drought. The drought corrected this year, therefore so did the insects. There are probably local fluctuations like this but as I understand the global situation is pretty dire. A lot of it is from habitat loss, same with other wipeouts of biodiversity, but also ecumenical use of pesticides.