When I was in kindergarten, September was a magical time. As the teachers let us out of class for recess, we would sprint toward the playground, jumping in the air, whooping, cupping our hands together, trying to catch the elusive pairs of black and red insects that abounded around us.
September passed this way until, suddenly, all the bugs would disappear. Adults were left to scrub their car windshields clean while we forlornly returned to our bugless swing sets and slides. Come May, though, the cycle would always begin again.
September and May were lovebug breeding seasons in Florida, when swarms of these unique bugs, commonly seen in pairs, would descend upon homes, roads, and playgrounds.
This past May, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I saw a lovebug. At some point between kindergarten and college, all the lovebugs had disappeared—this time, for good. My lovebug mystery is not the only “missing persons” case that has developed recently in the insect world. Across the globe, insect populations have declined precipitously, causing major consequences for global ecosystems and food networks.
These declines are taking place on a major scale. Some scientists estimate there has been as much as a 75% reduction in insect biomass worldwide in the last 50 years. Insects are going extinct eight times faster than mammals, birds, or reptiles.
Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, is a leading world authority on insect declines. His recent book, Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse, describes the perils of insect population loss and assesses the current situation.
“[The rate of decline] varies geographically and depends on which group of insects you look at,” Goulson told The Politic. “Some of the more dramatic rates of decline seem really alarming.”
Researchers from Radboud University sounded an early alarm about insect deaths in one 2017 study. The study, which analyzed insect populations in German nature reserves, found a 76% decline in insect biomass over 27 years. It’s difficult to estimate how quickly insects are dying across different habitats, biomes, and continents, but scientists generally accept that insects are declining globally by about one to two percent per year.
Environmentalists aren’t the only ones who fear a world without insects. Insect decline is certain to have disastrous consequences, as the species at risk are essential to global agricultural and ecological systems. They’re the pollinators who tend our crops and the predators who consume our pests. Between pollination and pest control, estimates suggest that insects contribute at least $57 billion of value to the US economy every year.
According to Goulson, if insects continue to disappear at current rates, humans will soon feel the impact at the dinner table.
“If insect populations continue to fall, and at the same time the human population continues to rise, then something’s gotta give,” the professor said. “It won’t affect people in rich countries terribly much because most of us can afford to pay more for our food. But in developing countries where they’re already struggling to afford food, that’s where it’s really going to hurt. Ultimately, millions, possibly billions, of people could die.”
Goulson’s prediction is supported by a body of evidence demonstrating that insects are essential for global food systems. The U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service reports that 35% of the world’s food crops depend on pollinators, and food crops are overwhelmingly reliant on insects as predators that eliminate pests. These species—not only honeybees, but also beetles, flies, ladybugs, and countless others—are fundamental for food production. If insect declines continue, scientists agree it will be nearly impossible to produce enough crops to feed the world’s population.
Already, agricultural production chains are feeling the effects of insect loss. Across the world, farmers are searching for solutions to decreasing crop yields caused by a lack of pollination. In one case, bee declines forced farmers in China’s Sichuan province to pollinate their apple orchards by hand, using chicken feathers to spread pollen from one tree to another. Hand pollination is notoriously costly, but is becoming increasingly necessary for farmers worldwide.
Insect loss won’t only affect the diets of humans. Insects are the cornerstones of countless food webs as the primary prey of many reptiles, birds, and amphibians. The interactions between insects and their predators are so complex that scientists cannot map them out precisely. That means that we are in the dark about how far we are from famine and scarcity. We will only know once enough essential species disappear—and we feel the consequences.
“One question people sometimes ask is, how will we know when all the insects are extinct? Well, we won’t because we’ll be gone before then,” said Dr. Eliza Grames, a Biology professor at Binghamton University who focuses on insect biodiversity. “The insects will outlast us, for sure.”
The importance of insects in world production chains means that their loss will likely have complex downstream effects. Marta Wells is an insect specialist and professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale. She notes that agricultural breakdowns from insect declines could radically transform the geopolitical landscape.
“In places where there are no insects, there will be less food. When people can’t eat, they’ll migrate. And when they migrate, people in other countries will feel the effects,” Wells said.
Insect loss will have many disastrous consequences, but won’t it also remove mosquitoes, ticks, and other bugs that are irritating or dangerous to humans? In an ironic twist of fate, the answer appears to be “no.” Goulson says the insects that ravage our crops and disrupt our picnics are in fact poised for success in the human world.
“Highly mobile, fast-breeding insects with a short generation time and a capacity to increase their population very quickly have proved to be quite resilient,” Goulson said. “And if they’re lucky enough to be insects that thrive in man-made habitats, or like to eat crops that humans grow a lot of, then they will do very well.”
A world of declining insect populations, Goulson argues, is not a world without mosquitoes or aphids. It will be a world without spiders or butterflies or ladybugs, the creatures that overwhelmingly help, not hurt, us.
“We’re never going to drive all insects extinct. Some of them are very tough and are actually doing quite well,” Goulson said. “But they’re a minority, and annoyingly for us, they tend to be the ones that are harmful to us or our crops.”
For years, scientists have sought a precise answer to the mystery of insect declines. Are insects being wiped out by habitat loss or by climate change? Pollution or pesticides? Eventually, scientists arrived at an unfortunate conclusion: all these factors are driving insect declines.
“The factors work together,” Wells said. “First, we destroy the habitat. Then, we plant corn and create a monoculture, reducing the number of insects that can live there. Then, on top, we add pesticides.”
In Silent Earth, Goulson likens the insect crisis to the Agatha Christie novel Murder on the Orient Express. In this classic mystery tale, there is no single murderer – every suspect had a hand in the victim’s death. Goulson sees a similar story in the insect crisis: it’s not one factor, but many, that causes insect declines. Grames agrees that the varieties of insect species and behaviors makes it tricky to find one easy answer. She points to data from California as an example.
“Researchers have been collecting data from butterfly communities in the low elevations in the Central Valley of California, then at some high elevations in the Sierras. The data shows that from the 1970s to the 2000s, butterfly declines in the valleys have been caused by habitat loss and pesticides. But at higher elevations, the populations were relatively stable,” Grames told The Politic. “Then, over the last 20 years, the higher elevation populations have declined because of climate change. So, [there are] different causes in different settings.”
Climate change is an emerging issue in the conversation about insect declines. Temperature and seasonal changes could greatly impact insect populations, which rely on these seasonal markers for essential behaviors. Nevertheless, both Goulson and Grames feel climate change has not affected insects as much as other factors such as habitat loss or pesticides. Specifically, Goulson points out “land use change,” a term ecologists frequently use to describe all human actions that alter the wild state of an environment. This term encompasses actions as diverse as deforestation, resource extraction, construction, and agriculture.
“A lot of people want to jump to climate change as the biggest factor. But historically, land use change has been what’s driving declines,” Grames said. “In the future, climate change will be a bigger issue, and we’re starting to see that in some places. But it’s not the final stab on the Orient Express.”
That ‘final stab’ is a topic of fierce debate in insect ecology. Still, Goulson and Grames agree that habitat loss, or more generally “land use change,” is the prime suspect.
“Globally, habitat loss is the biggest driver. We’ve been radically changing habitats for many centuries. Habitat loss is also interwoven with the intensification of farming and pesticides because a lot of that habitat loss is to clear land for agriculture,” Goulson said. “It’s hard to disentangle.”
When Goulson mentions farming and pesticides, he refers to the catastrophic effects of insect-killing chemicals on the natural world. For example, bee declines—which have dominated media coverage of insects in recent years—are tied closely to pesticide use. The World Animal Foundation reports that in 2018, U.S. beekeepers lost as much as 40 percent of their honeybee colonies. A major cause was a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids.
Neonicotinoids are infamous for wreaking havoc on insect populations. Known as neonics for short, these pesticides were first registered for agricultural use in the 1990s, after which their popularity exploded. Today, they are the most widely used insecticide in the world.
Neonics work by permanently binding to insects’ nerve cells, overstimulating and destroying them. Affected insects exhibit uncontrollable shaking followed by paralysis and death. Notably, scientists agree that only 2 to 5% of neonic chemicals make it into the target plant: more than 95% seep into the surrounding environment. One 2015 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found neonic pollution in more than 50% of streams it sampled across the country.
The most striking fact about neonics, besides their xenocidal effects on insects, is that farmers often do not need to use them at all. Neonics are used prophylactically — in other words, whether the farmer has a pest problem or not. Wendy Kerner, an environmental attorney who specializes in neonicotinoid use, believes that many farmers who use these deadly pesticides could achieve equal crop yields without them.
“Peer-reviewed and independent study after study show that there’s no increased yield when farmers use neonicotinoids,” said Kerner. “But the farmers are just resigned to it; it’s the way they’ve always done it. It’s the status quo.”
European policymakers have taken considerable action to protect insects from neonics. In 2013, the European Union banned three kinds of neonics on flowering crops to protect pollinators. However, the chemicals continued to contaminate bee colonies. Even if flowering crops were free from neonics, non-flowering crops still leeched the chemicals into the soil and groundwater, where it was absorbed by wildflowers and other plants bees love. So, in 2018, the European Union extended the ban to all field crops.
Meanwhile, in the United States, neonicotinoid use is pervasive, even on flowering crops. According to Kerner, almost 100% of non-organic corn is grown with neonicotinoid-treated seeds. For soybeans, the rate is about 75%. She noted that U.S. environmental regulation standards make it difficult to implement pesticide restrictions as binding as the European Union’s.
“I think that one of the biggest reasons we have this problem in our country is because of our regulatory principles,” Kerner said. “The E.U. banned neonics because they operate under the precautionary principle, where the industry has to show governmental regulators that their chemicals won’t harm the environment. In the U.S., we fast-track these pesticides, register them, and then wait to see what happens.”
In 2013, U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) introduced a federal bill to suspend the registration of neonic pesticides. The bill, entitled the “Save America’s Pollinators Act,” would crack down on neonic seed dressings, which are currently exempt from many regulations. However, the bill—which Blumenauer most recently reintroduced to Congress last June—has never picked up debate or speed. According to Kerner, this is in large part due to the powerful persuasion tactics of agricultural companies.
“The industry pushes back on every level and in every way that they can,” said Kerner. “Primarily, they try to downplay the science or mislead the public with their own self-funded studies. They also have strong lobbying groups that lobby against these regulations at state and federal levels.”
As a bloc, agribusiness companies spend more than $90 million a year on federal lobbying efforts, making them one of the most powerful private interests in Congress. These companies also frequently hire EPA employees after they leave the public sector, creating a complex system of conflicts of interest that work against meaningful pesticide legislation.
But just as the causes of the insect crisis are varied, so are the solutions. To halt or reverse insect death, governments and corporations must work to stop habitat loss, plant and protect native plants, cease using dangerous pesticides, and fight climate change—a tough bill to foot.
But solutions can start small. Grames, the insect biodiversity researcher, feels that one simple change could drastically change the fate of American insect populations.
“Insects need to be classified legally as wildlife within states. Right now, few states consider insects to be wildlife. So state conservation or fish and wildlife departments can’t work on insect conservation. Their hands are tied,” Grames said. “I think within the U.S., that’s the best thing that could possibly happen because it opens up so many other avenues of funding and resources that can be put toward insects.”
For example, insects do not fall under Oregon’s definition of wildlife, but states such as Nebraska and Washington do work to conserve insects. At least 12 states are known to exclude insects from their definition of “wildlife.”
Beyond policy changes, there are also solutions that individuals can implement in their own communities to make major improvements.
“One of the positive things about this whole subject is that people can do something themselves,” said Goulson. “Insects are everywhere. They’re in our backyards, they’re in local parks and cities. Making a garden more wildlife-friendly is easy to do: don’t use any pesticides, grow some native wildflowers, don’t mow the lawn all the time. Simple stuff.”
Goulson also mentions other meaningful individual actions that help insects; he advises buying local seasonal organic produce and avoiding meat. But he emphasizes that voting for green policies is the most impactful action individuals can take to aid conservation efforts.
“Politicians should appreciate that there are votes to be had in looking after the planet,” Goulson said.
Grames and Wells both feel that people have the power to help insects and avoid the ‘doom scenario.’ Insects, as a whole, are a resilient group. Their short generation times make them easily adaptable, and their small size enables them to adjust to niches. This ‘missing persons’ case is a solvable one. If we give them the tools to rebuild, insects will return.
One day, as I sit in my backyard and breathe in fragrant May air, I hope that the sky will again flutter with red and black as thousands of lovebugs find their partners. These bugs earn their romantic name from their beautiful courtship routine—once they have found their partner, they attach to each other, often remaining in an embrace for the rest of their two-and-a-half day lifetimes. I imagine watching the bugs flit in their pairings, bumping into awnings and bushes and awkwardly navigating the world as a new unit with two heads and 12 legs. I imagine my relief that we saved these unique and devoted lovers from fading into extinction.
Cover image: Original Graphic (Malik Figaro/The Yale Politic)