Decline in insects causes rise in concerns for environment

A butterfly sits on a leaf. Courtesy: Aidan McAuliffe

Listen to the full audio storyBy Emma Baldwin

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Dr. Gregory Zolnerowich is a professor of entomology at Kansas State University, and he believes, along with many other scientists, that something is happening with insects. The number of insects has been in decline for decades, but only in recent years has the general public learned of it. Many studies have come out from around the world about the insects in that environment, and most of them say that there has been some sort of loss.

            "Scientists generally agree there is a problem in not just insects, but the natural world, and we've been cognizant for a very long time that something happening to the insect population,” said Zolnerowich. “The problem is we often don't even know it's in our own backyard.”

The Discovery of The Loss

            There was not a specific single insect that caused scientists to start looking more closely, though the loss of pollinators like bees and butterflies is what caused the public to take notice even though scientists started noticing the decline “as far back as 30 years ago.” Zolnerowich explained the reason for this as pollinators are more “charismatic” and therefore the public pays more attention to them. “If you're the public, which one are you going to donate your money to? The cute panda bear that's fuzzy and has a backbone, or the grubby little insect that eats dead animals,” is a question that he often asks in one of his classes every year.

A bee sits on a dandelion. Courtesy: Aidan McAuliffe

            "Actually, the carrion beetle is doing us a service,” said Zolnerowich. "It's recycling dead animals; it's getting those nutrients back into a cycle. Whereas the pandas, they're cute and fuzzy. Humans have a certain bias towards pretty things.”

            Many different meta-analyses that have been done about the topic, which are studies of already concluded studies so you can get broader data. These studies most often agree that insects are, in fact, declining. Not all the studies came to the same conclusion as for the reasoning for this, but there were some recurring explanations given.

            “The most common things you see are climate change, habitat loss, land converted to farming or suburban areas and things like that,” said Zolnerowich. “Pollution slash insecticides or pesticides, we use a lot of chemicals in our environment. They may not always kill insects, but they can have what are called sublethal effects where if they're exposed to a chemical or a pesticide, it doesn't kill them, but it affects their behavior or their physiology in some way.”

            An example of this would be colony collapse disorder, where honey bees leave the hive for an unknown reason and never come back, and the hive eventually dies. Zolnerowich said this is part of the reason for the public’s attention, as pollinators are “a very, very hot topic right now.”

The Possible Effects of This

            There is not a sure conclusion as to what this could mean. Insects are such a core part of the ecosystem by bringing nutrients into the environment that it is hard to predict what the effects could be. Everything is “connected,” and “if you start losing insects, you will start losing plants,” according to Zolnerowich.

            “I use the term ecosystem services,” said Zolnerowich. “They pollinate crops, but they also pollinate wild and native plants. There are ecological linkages we don’t even know about. They aerate the soil, they recycle little things like dead plants, dead wood, dead insects. All that is food for insects. They get all those nutrients and those calories and things back into some sort of nutrients or ecological cycle.”

            The climate getting warmer is not only affecting most insects, but also the pest insects. Many of them are moving northward. This change in the climate provides specific types of mosquitos with opportunities to reach the U.S., though it is not an epidemic yet.

            “When people go to other countries, they get bitten by a mosquito and they get malaria,” said Zolnerowich, “and they bring it back in, but they get caught at the border because people like health officials check for that. But there have been some cases of malaria in the U.S. in people who did not travel outside the country.”

            Misinformation about bees and if they go extinct are everywhere. Zolnerowich said that the idea that if bees go extinct, humans go extinct is “totally false.”

            “Most of our major food crops like wheat and things like that are pollinated by wind,” said Zolnerowich. “They’re not pollinated by insects, but we would lose a lot of tasty things.”

What Can Be Done

            Many different things are being done to try to combat this issue, along with things the general public can do to help. Zolnerowich believed actions like being informed from reliable sources of information, voting for politicians that have similar views about nature and conservation, plant pollinator friendly gardens, volunteer and donate money to any conservation organizations are examples of them.

            “It used to be protecting that an individual species was sort of the paradigm or the ‘this species is in danger, so we need to protect it,’ but more now if you protect the environment, protect a larger area, you're protecting everything in there,” said Zolnerowich.

This means that even just protecting one environment or one type of species will help all the species in that area. Research focusing on protecting a specific species will help the environment it is in, so it also helps all the other species in that area.

            Scientists are still not sure what will happen if this pattern of insects disappearing continues, but it’s enough of a concern to be worried.

            “I don’t think we can necessarily anticipate what they’ll be,” said Zolnerowich, “but I think bad things will happen.”