The Little Things that Run the World - and how they are silently going extinct

Love them or hate them (and let’s be honest, we mostly hate them), every insect plays a vital role in our lives. We literally cannot live without them. For all that they do for us, we don’t spare them much thought, so please have a quick read of this. I promise it’s important stuff to know!

There are so many insects. They make up 2/3 of ALL SPECIES ON EARTH!!!!!

Not only are they food for a huge variety of other animals, they also recycle (turn dead animals/plants into healthy soil), move seeds around the world, pollinate plants and are responsible for all of our crops and food that we eat!

Without insects, life on earth would grind to a halt.

So the fact that insects are slowly dieing out is actually a really scary concept.

Why are insects dieing out?

They are a huge number of adverse conditions that are making it really hard for insects to survive:

• A loss of insect rich habitats (woodlands, marshes, flower meadows, rainforests etc) due to building cities and clearing nature for crops.

• Pesticides used in gardens and farming.

• Invasive species

• Climate change

• Light pollution (this particularly effects nocturnal insects like moths)

It’s important to note that pretty much all of the above are human-induced (are we surprised!)

How do we know insects are dieing out?

It is really hard to conduct research on insects. They are obviously teeny tiny and live their day to day lives out of sight most of the time (that is until that annoying fly gets trapped in your bedroom and won’t make it’s way out no matter how many windows you open).

However, long-term research has shown a decline across a huge number of insect species. For example butterfly research in the UK was conducted, where volunteers have surveyed butterflies in an area since the 1970s and noticed less and less over time. Another research example is in Germany involving an insect trapping experiment, which showed a loss of weight in the insects captured over a number of years. Finally, insect-eating birds such as cuckoos are in decline, showing a correlation between lack of food and a decline of species.

Any decline is bad but the decline of insects is huge. In the Netherlands, research shows butterfly declines of 84% in the last 130 years.

Researchers analysed 120,000 butterflies caught by collectors between 1890 and 1980 as well as more recent scientific data from more than 2 million sightings to identify dramatic declines in the country’s 71 native butterfly species, 15 of which have become extinct over the last century. the main reason for the declines in the Netherlands was modern industrial farming – as carried out across the lowlands of western Europe – which left little space for nature. Species to have vanished entirely from the Netherlands include the marsh fritillary, the black-veined white and the large blue.

Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash

So what can we do?

Probably the most obvious thing to do is grow more pollinator-friendly flowers. If you have a garden or a lawn, avoid mowing and grow some wildflowers or even put a pond in to attract insect life.

Try to buy organic with the food you eat and the clothes you buy. The less demand there is for products that need fertiliser the better!

Join your local wildlife group and volunteer to do tree planting and citizen science monitoring surveys.

Promote wildflower meadows in public spaces - roundabouts, public parks, wildflower verges. Tell your elected representatives and local city or county council why its important to have wild spaces.

Tell people that this is happening. Get people interested in bugs, especially kids. The more we know and the more we care, the more we’ll do something about it.

Further reading:

A really great study “Meta-analysis reveals declines in terrestrial but increases in freshwater insect abundances” in the Science journal can be found here.

The IBPES 2021 report on biodiversity looks at biodiversity loss, including insects found here.

A super interesting article on what we can do to stop the extinction of insects can be found here.

An all round LOVELY piece about insects and why are they really fascinating can be read here.