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By Robert Walker
In a new report, scientists warn of a precipitous drop in the world's insect population. We need to pay close attention, as over time, this could be just as catastrophic to humans as it is to insects. Special attention must be paid to the principal drivers of this insect decline, because while climate change is adding to the problem, food production is a much larger contributor.
A new study has found that exposure to certain pesticides can alter bees' genes, leading researchers to call for tougher regulations on the widely-used chemicals.
The study, published Wednesday in Molecular Ecology, looked at the impact of two neonicotinoid pesticides on bumblebee populations and found that they impacted genes involved in a variety of important biological processes.
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Insects Could Go Extinct Within a Century, With 'Catastrophic' Consequences for Life on Earth
More than 40 percent of the world's insects could go extinct in the next few decades, according to a report that lead author Francisco Sánchez-Bayo told CNN was the first global review of the threats facing the class that makes up 70 percent of earth's animals.
A third of insects are endangered species, and they are going extinct at a rate eight times that of birds, mammals and reptiles. That amounts to a loss of 2.5 percent of insect mass every year over the last three decades.
By Daisy Dunne
Global warming could increase both the number and appetite of insect pests, new research finds, which could pose a serious threat to global crop production.
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By Marlene Cimons
This is one flying insect you don't want to swat. It doesn't bite, sting or spread disease. In fact, someday it could be a life- and climate-saver. In time, it could even be used to survey crops, detect wildfires, poke around in disaster rubble searching for survivors and sniff out gas leaks, especially global warming-fueling methane, a powerful greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Sticking to aggressive decarbonization targets laid out under the Paris agreement is crucial to saving thousands of species that form the basis of the planet's ecosystem, according to new research.
By Clyde Sorenson, Elsa Youngsteadt and Rebecca Irwin
The Venus flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, lives in a tough neighborhood. It only grows in 12 counties in coastal North and South Carolina, in soils that are very nutrient-poor and often waterlogged. To augment these starvation resources, it captures and digests insects and other animal prey.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded in a new assessment that "most uses" of three widely used neonicotinoids—imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam—pose a risk to wild bees and honeybees, which play a crucial role in pollination across the globe.
The conclusion, based on analysis of more than 1,500 studies, will likely prompt a total ban on the pesticides from all fields across the European Union when the issue comes to a vote next month, the Guardian reported.
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Brooklyn Printmaker Hilary Lorenz Celebrates an Overlooked Pollinator: the Moth
By Patrick Rogers
The winged insects of artist Hilary Lorenz's Moth Migration Project come from Lithuania, Turkey, Bermuda and across the U.S. Made of ink and paper and hand-cut in a variety of shapes and sizes, they aren't real moths and they aren't, strictly speaking, the artist's: Early last year, Lorenz, a printmaker and professor of art and media arts at Long Island University in Brooklyn, put out a call on social media for people everywhere to make prints of the moths that live in their locales and to send their creations to her.
A new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE adds more evidence that insect populations around the globe are in perilous decline.
For the study, researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands, alongside their German and English colleagues, measured the biomass of trapped flying insects at 63 nature preserves in Germany since 1989. They were shocked to discover that the total biomass decreased dramatically over the 27 years of the study, with a seasonal decline of 76 percent and mid-summer decline of 82 percent, when insect numbers tend to peak.
By John R. Platt
It's Friday evening in Pittsburgh, and the mosquitoes are out in force. One bites at my arm and I try to slap it away. Another takes the opportunity to land on my neck. I manage to shoo this one off before it tastes blood.
I'm at Carrie Furnaces, a massive historic ironworks on the banks of Pennsylvania's Monongahela River. Stories-tall rusting structures loom all around me, as do the occasional trees poking their way out of the ground. A tour guide, leading a group from the Society of Environmental Journalists conference, tells me the soil here is full of heavy metals and other pollutants from the factory, which operated for nearly a century before closing in 1982.