The other day, in my closet, was a bug that, at first glance, could be mistaken for a scorpion, complete with a tail and what resembled pinchers, all too familiar to residents of the desert southwest who have seen these critters in the wild. This, however, was a simple insect that is actually harmless to humans and cannot even sting. Caused me to heave a sigh of relief for sure, but only after I had sent it off to its untimely demise with a newspaper.
It got me thinking about the bugs that have now burrowed into the earth to begin their 17-year lifecycle, a cycle that marks a generation for those of us living above ground to suffer through whatever calamities the next decade and a half will bring to our planet.
Those who witnessed the recent emergence of the Brood X cicadas may be surprised to learn that scientists are increasingly worried that many parts of the world are experiencing long-term declines in insects - the so-called insect apocalypse. Even the cicadas, whose cacophonous song still rings in our ears, have been affected: in some places, such as Long Island⁹, New York, the Brood X phenomenon was a bust, with few, if any, cicadas emerging.
Elsewhere in the United States, some studies have reported stark declines in insects, while others have not. Thus, both the magnitude and causes of the insect die-off in this country are murky. Yet we need to pay close attention to what is happening. Any widespread, large drop in insect abundance could have lasting, severe consequences on a par with other, better-known environmental threats.
Unfortunately, we do not monitor insect populations in the United States with any vigor or consistency, apart from butterflies and some agricultural pests. But, insects - like all species - suffer when their habitats are plowed or covered with pavement. They are also fatally drawn to lights and vulnerable to pesticides, ranging from the ones we pour on croplands by the ton to the ones we use on lawns and gardens. These pesticides include chemicals designed to kill insects (insecticides) as well as those designed to kill weeds (herbicides). And what is a weed to a farmer or a gardener is an important food plant for some beneficial insects. Unfortunately, no one knows the precise degree of harm caused by pesticides or any of the other threats, much less how these threats might interact with each other to affect insect populations.
This should cause all of us some concern. While some insects eat our crops or spread disease, the lives of humans - and almost every other species on this planet - are nonetheless dependent upon insects, whose roles as pollinators, decomposers and food for myriad other animals, including many birds and fish, are irreplaceable.
Indeed, a team of scientists based at Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology published a report in 2019 announcing that the United States has lost 3 billion birds, equivalent to nearly 30 percent of the estimated North American total in 1970. Declines were noted in all regions of the country. Studies by numerous scientists show how the fragmentation of our forests due to development and the intensification of farming in grasslands has harmed birds. We are now forced to wonder whether scientists have overlooked another major culprit: the decline of the insects they eat.
Because insects are legion, inconspicuous and hard to meaningfully track, the fear that there might be far fewer than before was more felt than documented. People noticed it by canals or in backyards or under streetlights at night - familiar places that had become unfamiliarly empty. The feeling was so common that entomologists developed a shorthand for it, named for the way many people first began to notice that they were not seeing as many bugs. They called it the windshield phenomenon.
It does beg the question: How could something as fundamental as the bugs in the sky just disappear? And what would become of the world without them?
Anyone who has returned to a childhood haunt to find that everything somehow got smaller knows that humans are not great at remembering the past accurately. This is especially true when it comes to changes to the natural world. It is impossible to maintain a fixed perspective, as Heraclitus observed 2,500 years ago: It is not the same river, but we are also not the same people.
With each generation, the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each generation takes that amount as the norm.
By one measure, bugs are the wildlife we know best, the nondomesticated animals whose lives intersect most intimately with our own: spiders in the shower, ants at the picnic, ticks buried in the skin. We sometimes feel that we know them rather too well. In another sense, though, they are one of our planet’s greatest mysteries, a reminder of how little we know about what is happening on the world around us.
The current worldwide loss of biodiversity is popularly known as the sixth extinction: the sixth time in world history that a large number of species have disappeared in unusually rapid succession - caused this time not by asteroids or ice ages, but by humans. When we think about losing biodiversity, we tend to think of the last northern white rhinos protected by armed guards, of polar bears on dwindling ice floes. Extinction is a visceral tragedy, universally understood: There is no coming back from it. The guilt of letting a unique species vanish is eternal.
But extinction is not the only tragedy through which we are living. What about the species that still exist, but as a shadow of what they once were?
What we are losing is not just the diversity part of biodiversity, but the bio part: life in sheer quantity.
Scientists have tried to calculate the benefits that insects provide simply by going about their business in large numbers.
Over the years, the federal government has launched missions to the moon, to Mars and to the depths of the ocean. I now see an opportunity - an imperative, really - for the Biden administration to launch what I will call a mission to our own backyards: a scientific initiative to figure out what is happening to the insects (and the songbirds) - and, most importantly, what we can do about it.
The United States needs a nationwide network of sites in natural ecosystems, farmlands and gardens where populations of insects are monitored annually, akin to North American Breeding Bird Survey, which is organized by Interior Department, or the butterfly counts run by Xeeces Society and other organizations. For some insect groups - such as butterflies and dragonflies - there may already be enough amateur experts to do the monitoring at no cost. But, given the tens of thousands of other types of insects in this country, we will need to hire and train more entomologists.
The mission should also include an expanded research initiative involving federal and state governments and universities to understand how the various threats to insects and birds interact with each other and what steps can be taken to reduce their impact.
We cannot afford to wait another 17 years, until the offspring of this summer’s cicadas emerge, to get some clear answers.
Comments