
Scientists announced today that pesticide use on rice fields led to the collapse of a nearby fishery in Lake Shinji, Japan, according to a new study published in the journal Science.
The long-term study seems to have borne out the prophecy of Rachel Carson's seminal 1962 book Silent Spring, in which the author describes the nefarious trickle down effects of chemical pesticides that could "still the leaping of fish." While it is impossible to say that the use of pesticides caused the collapse of the fishery, the correlation is extremely strong.
The researchers looked at the degradation of the food chain around rice paddies after the introduction of the pesticide neonicotinoids in 1993 in Japan. The study showed an immediate decline in insect and plankton populations in Lake Shinji after the pesticide was sprayed in nearby rice fields, as The Guardian reported.
The decline in insects and plankton then led to the collapse of eel and smelt populations, which rely on the tiny insects for food. The scientists looked at other possible causes for the collapse of the smelt and eel fisheries, but those were all ruled out. The scientists say there is "compelling evidence" that neonicotinoids are the culprit, as The Guardian reported.
The pesticide has previously been linked to declines in pollinator populations. Researchers have found that it lowers the sperm count of bees and shortens their lifespan, as EcoWatch reported. Its role in colony collapse disorder and in declining butterfly populations caused the European Union to ban the world's most popular insecticide for all outdoor use in 2018, as Reuters reported.
Previous studies have also linked ripple effects of the pesticide's application to cause collapses of mayflies, dragonflies and snails. A Dutch study found that bird populations declined where the insecticide was sprayed. In that case, the absence of swallows, starlings and tree sparrows does not mean they were dying, but possibly moved to riper feeding grounds.
By contrast, the study is the first time a potential link has been shown between the insecticide and its effect on other animals, including vertebrates, according to a press release from the American Association for The Advancement of Science.
The year that the insecticide was first applied, 1993, coincided with an 83 percent decrease in the average amount of springtime plankton. A year later, the smelt harvest collapsed from 240 tons per year to just 22 tons in a single year, according to the study. Additionally, the midge, Chironomus plumosus, which smelt also feed on, was one of the worst affected bugs. It vanished completely from all 39 locations sampled in 2016, despite being abundant in 1982.
The researchers noted that Rachel Carson's book was prophetic. In their paper, The Guardian reported, the Japanese researchers said how "she wrote: 'These sprays, dusts and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests and homes – nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the 'good' and the 'bad', to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams.' The ecological and economic impact of neonicotinoids on the inland waters of Japan confirms Carson's prophecy."
"This disruption likely also occurs elsewhere, as neonicotinoids are currently the most widely used class of insecticides globally," worth more than $3 billion per year, they said, as The Guardian reported.
The German company Bayer is the world's largest producer of neonicotinoids.
"The annihilation of humble flies and the knock on effects on fish serve as further testament to the dreadful folly of neonicotinoids," said Matt Shardlow, from the charity Buglife, to The Guardian. "Let's hope this is a wake-up call for Asian countries and they move to quickly ban the chemicals from paddyfields."
- Neonicotinoid Pesticides Have Been Found in Wild Turkeys ... ›
- Loved to Death: How Pirate Fishing Decimates Chile's Favorite Fish ... ›
- Local Communities Play Outsized but Overlooked Role in Global ... ›
Sweden's reindeer have a problem. In winter, they feed on lichens buried beneath the snow. But the climate crisis is making this difficult. Warmer temperatures mean moisture sometimes falls as rain instead of snow. When the air refreezes, a layer of ice forms between the reindeer and their meal, forcing them to wander further in search of ideal conditions. And sometimes, this means crossing busy roads.
- San Antonio, Texas Unveils Largest Highway Crossing for Wildlife in ... ›
- Wildlife Crossings a Huge Success - EcoWatch ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Heatwaves are not just distinct to the land. A recent study found lakes are susceptible to temperature rise too, causing "lake heatwaves," The Independent reported.
- Climate Change Will Be Sudden and Cataclysmic Unless We Act Now ›
- There's a Heatwave at the Arctic 'Doomsday Vault' - EcoWatch ›
- Marine Heatwaves Destroy Ocean Ecosystems Like Wildfires ... ›
Trending
By Aaron W Hunter
A chance discovery of a beautifully preserved fossil in the desert landscape of Morocco has solved one of the great mysteries of biology and paleontology: how starfish evolved their arms.
The Pompeii of palaeontology. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<h2></h2><p>Although starfish might appear very robust animals, they are typically made up of lots of hard parts attached by ligaments and soft tissue which, upon death, quickly degrade. This means we rely on places like the Fezouata formations to provide snapshots of their evolution.</p><p>The starfish fossil record is patchy, especially at the critical time when many of these animal groups first appeared. Sorting out how each of the various types of ancient starfish relate to each other is like putting a puzzle together when many of the parts are missing.</p><h2>The Oldest Starfish</h2><p><em><a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/216101v1.full.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cantabrigiaster</a></em> is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. It was discovered in 2003, but it has taken over 17 years to work out its true significance.</p><p>What makes <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> unique is that it lacks almost all the characteristics we find in brittle stars and starfish.</p><p>Starfish and brittle stars belong to the family Asterozoa. Their ancestors, the Somasteroids were especially fragile - before <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> we only had a handful of specimens. The celebrated Moroccan paleontologist Mohamed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.06.041" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ben Moula</a> and his local team was instrumental in discovering <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018216302334?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">these amazing fossils</a> near the town of Zagora, in Morocco.</p><h2>The Breakthrough</h2><p>Our breakthrough moment came when I compared the arms of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> with those of modern sea lilles, filter feeders with long feathery arms that tend to be attached to the sea floor by a stem or stalk.</p><p>The striking similarity between these modern filter feeders and the ancient starfish led our team from the University of Cambridge and Harvard University to create a new analysis. We applied a biological model to the features of all the current early Asterozoa fossils in existence, along with a sample of their closest relatives.</p>Cantabrigiaster is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<p>Our results demonstrate <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> is the most primitive of all the Asterozoa, and most likely evolved from ancient animals called crinoids that lived 250 million years before dinosaurs. The five arms of starfish are a relic left over from these ancestors. In the case of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em>, and its starfish descendants, it evolved by flipping upside-down so its arms are face down on the sediment to feed.</p><p>Although we sampled a relatively small numbers of those ancestors, one of the unexpected outcomes was it provided an idea of how they could be related to each other. Paleontologists studying echinoderms are often lost in detail as all the different groups are so radically different from each other, so it is hard to tell which evolved first.</p>President Joe Biden officially took office Wednesday, and immediately set to work reversing some of former President Donald Trump's environmental policies.
- Biden Reaffirms Commitment to Rejoining Paris Agreement ... ›
- Biden Likely Plans to Cancel Keystone XL Pipeline on Day One ... ›
- Joe Biden Appoints Climate Crisis Team - EcoWatch ›
In many schools, the study of climate change is limited to the science. But at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, students in one class also learn how to take climate action.