The vanishing of insects around the globe is causing scientists to issue and ‘ecological armageddon’ warning. The abundance of insects has plunged by three quarters and scientists feel now is the time to sound the alarm.
Three-quarters of flying insects in nature reserves across Germany have vanished in 25 years, with serious implications for all life on Earth, scientists say. According to The Guardian, insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife. It was known that some species, such as butterflies, were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is ‘on course for ecological Armageddon’, with profound impacts on human society.
‘The fact that the number of flying insects is decreasing at such a high rate in such a large area is an alarming discovery,’ said Hans de Kroon, at Radboud University in the Netherlands and who led the new research which discovered the plummeting insect population. The research, published in the journal Plos One, is based on the work of dozens of amateur entomologists across Germany who began using strictly standardized ways of collecting insects in 1989.
This post was published at shtfplan on October 19th, 2017.
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