Saturday, April 23, 2022

The world is facing an insect apocalypse. Really!

How many times have we been told this apocalyptic claim in recent decades! E.g. bee colony collapse etc. etc.

Of course, urbanization and human population growth impact nature. It is also well known that insects and other living organisms are able to adopt to natural climate change as they have done for many millennia of years.

This study is obviously driven by the ideology of the scientists! Just look at the title of the study!

"... However, their numbers [insects] are currently in steep decline, having plunged by half in the most impacted parts of the world [???], a new study found. ...
the largest assessments of insect biodiversity change ever done. They analyzed about three-quarters of a million samples from around 6,000 sites [only 6000 sites!] for nearly 20,000 different species. They compared insect biodiversity in different areas, considering emissions and agriculture intensity. ...
The researchers found that insects are facing an “unprecedented” threat due to climate change [The Global Warming hoax and Climate Change religion again] and habitat loss. ...
Areas with high-intensity agriculture and significant climate warning had a 49% lower number of insects than in natural habitats with no recorded climate warming, while the number of different species was 29% lower. ..."

From the abstract:
"Several previous studies have investigated changes in insect biodiversity, with some highlighting declines and others showing turnover in species composition without net declines. Although research has shown that biodiversity changes are driven primarily by land-use change and increasingly by climate change, the potential for interaction between these drivers and insect biodiversity on the global scale remains unclear. Here we show that the interaction between indices of historical climate warming [???} and intensive agricultural land use is associated with reductions of almost 50% in the abundance and 27% in the number of species within insect assemblages relative to those in less-disturbed habitats with lower rates of historical climate warming. These patterns are particularly evident in the tropical realm, whereas some positive responses of biodiversity to climate change occur in non-tropical regions in natural habitats. A high availability of nearby natural habitat often mitigates reductions in insect abundance and richness associated with agricultural land use and substantial climate warming [???] but only in low-intensity agricultural systems. In such systems, in which high levels (75% cover) of natural habitat are available, abundance and richness were reduced by 7% and 5%, respectively, compared with reductions of 63% and 61% in places where less natural habitat is present (25% cover). Our results show that insect biodiversity will probably benefit from mitigating climate change, preserving natural habitat within landscapes and reducing the intensity of agriculture."

The world is facing a “hidden” insect apocalypse

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