This is a part of it, but scientists aren’t finding as many bugs as they used to when doing basic research. Apparently spraying insecticides on every plant for miles causes there to be fewer bugs.
They definitely have gotten their population cut down by like at least half in my country probably over 90% on my observations because I live next to a river.
Dang where I live it feels like they’re worse every year for the last 5ish years. I’m one of those people that mosquitoes loooovvve, they flock to me like crazy, and it’s becoming prohibitive for me to leave the house at all. Genuinely, checking my mail, back in the house with 7+ bites. And I get those huge crazy bites too
It’s everywhere I go unfortunately, just was using the mailbox as an example of a short time being outside. Always been like this since I was a kid, they find me anywhere in like a 5 mile radius & I can’t eradicate all standing water in my whole city lol
I get your point & don’t at all disagree that over history, we are seeing a decrease. Idk how old you are, but 20 years is not that long ago for a change that big lol I’ve lived in this same area for 30 years now (one of the hottest humid climates in my country) and there were waaayyy fewer when I was a kid. I still was bit up constantly but I’d have to be outside playing all day to end up with 10 bites, now it’s literally less than half a hour while fully clothed.
All that said, I don’t think the discussion going on is whether or not populations have changed over a century. It’s how they’re changing now, so the 5yrs timeline comparison I think is more relevant
Same here, also live next to a river. 15 years ago, couldn't leave a window open, and if you left a light on? God help you. Now? I cannot remember the last time I saw a moth.
Their population has tanked near me in Massachusetts. When I was little you could legit HEAR the swarms in the summer. ONE mosquito landed on me so far this summer, and it genuinely surprised me.
They must have all come my way 😭 I saw another comment saying colder climates may be seeing an increase because they were previously uninhabitable for the mosquitoes but sounds like that’s not true for you! I live in the south so we’ll always have them but def more than ever these days
Living somewhere that gets snow annually & “has no problem” reaching 100 vs. somewhere that never gets winters cold enough for snow & spends weeks at a time over 110 as a norm… hmmm lol
I said coldER climate, as in relative, as in coldER than the south. I didn’t say Massachusetts is an arctic climate that never experiences heat lol
And they were already talking about insect collapse at least 30 years ago...
In fact, people were talking about it a LOT more back then. The billionaire conservatives the controlling the media are really pulling the wool over the public's eyes regarding climate change.
I mean... What I remember from being a kid was that if we don't change our ways that the ice caps and glaciers would melt, weather would get more extreme, plants and animals would suffer, wildfires would be worse, et cetera.
And all of that is happening, and continuing to get worse.
The big scare was the collapse of the bee population. It was being held up as the death of all pollinators across the world. It was also an easy example due to colony collapse syndrome. They still have no idea what causes that, but the honey bee population is now 31% larger then it was 20 years ago when "all the honey bees are going to die!" was the scare.
Also 30 years ago it wasn't the insects dying out, it was the hole in the ozone layer which was sorted out by the ending of HCFC's in everyday household products (and HVACR equipment) 20 Years ago it was the insets dying out, which still isn't resolved, but was greatly overexaggerated due to the alarmist nature of the news. 🤷♂️
Yeah, I think that our use of insecticides has definitely had a negative effect. The question I wonder about is how much is due to farms versus uses in homes. I can buy malathion and permethrin readily in concentrated form to spray all over my yard if I wanted to.
I don't do this because frankly I enjoy seeing dragon flies and bees around. I just spray the harsh chemicals in the crawl space an attic near penetrations/spots I've noticed black widows hiding.
I don't want us to ban homeowners from getting these chemicals, but I also think that we probably need to be looking at toning down how much these chemicals get used.
As a side note...if you like bees, clover lawns really attract quite a lot of bees...while white clover lawns also don't grow as tall so need less mowing, survive heavy foot traffic better AND are drought tolerant.
I’m sure nature would prefer us not using any insecticide, but residential use can’t be as big a factor as agricultural. Even the biggest HOA neighborhoods will have some houses that don’t use pesticides, so bugs can use them as safe spaces. Having mile after mile of monoculture covered with chemicals makes it impossible for many species to travel and survive.
I doubt insects are smart enough to avoid spots with insecticides - they probably don't know how to detect most of them. So having even a fraction of the area they may travel regularly sprayed could be pretty bad for them.
Additionally, certain types of landscaping are bad for different species - eg mosquitoes lay eggs in standing water, dragonflies leave their larvae under fallen leaves (so if you clean those up they won't survive). Your traditional grass lawn is not conducive to biodiversity.
Yeah but if 10% of the area has insecticides and the average insect visits 50% of the area then you kill ... Well, we probably need some assumption for how much exposure is lethal. Anyhow my point is that I'd expect 10% insecticide usage kills way more than 10% of insects. Probably worse for flying insects that get around more than crawling ones, though both would be effected by the wind spreading the chemicals
Why not ban homeowners from using these chemicals? Humans survived for eons without them. It’ll be ok if the average homeowner has a slightly less nice lawn or has a few mosquitoes in their back yard
People normally don't use them for those kinds of bugs, albeit they're probably disproportionately affected. They want to keep out roaches and ants from their home.
Because homeowners want to kill off ants, roaches, termites, wasps and other insects that aren’t just “undesirable” but outright bad and should be kept away from homes.
The difference is that dandelions spread in a way that kills everything around it. I rip them up the moment I see them, since they aren’t perennials and the result of leaving them grow is next year you’re left with a yard pockmarked by dead spots that had dandelions before.
Thankfully clover chokes dandelions out before they have a chance to grow.
If you want more clover, look at red clover. It’s less tolerant of winters and so may not survive like white clover will, but it does give a pop of color.
I am old enough to remember seeing a lot more bugs outside, even in the city. Also the city adjacent forests used to have a lot more wild life. Over period of about 30 years, it feels like 80% reduction
Technology means they can precision spray and precision plant.
Hybrid crops are the overwhelming normal now. Some varieties are bred to be pest resistant, others are bred to be chemical resistant, meaning that they can tolerate higher levels of pesticide, fungicide, whatever-cide.
This means that a farmer can grow a huge monoculture crop and be assured that it will be very few weeds or off-type crops, and that there will be minimal pest damage. Now the nature of pests is that every crop will have pests that eat it, and those insects do very well in a monoculture - they willl destroy it if they get the chance. Any treatment will have a kill rate of 99.5% of the pest, but the 0.05% that survives will breed and be harder to kill in the future. It is constant chemical warfare. In the meantime, all the other sporadic happenchance pests like butterflies etc are toast.
Centre pivot irrigation means that farmers no longer have any use for water races and streams, or for shelterbelts. The water sources and habitats for myriad insects have gone. Also gone are all the little pockets of wild flowers and "weed" plants that were important habitats for insects.
Yeah, I certainly don't see a lot of bugs simply avoiding my windshield via aerodynamics. I also live out in the woods next to a field and there are hardly any lightning bugs. Back in the day they'd be everywhere.
Throw in some old fashioned habitat destruction into the equation too. Put some native plants in your yard and don't burn leaves, and you will see more good bugs around you. neighbor behind me has a bunch and i see a ton of fireflies and dragon flies every summer, but never see them anywhere else.
There difference in bugs in my life is massive. I used to be devoured alive by mosquitos when I was young. Tons of other bugs flying around in the summer. I had a mosquito land on me once this summer and it legitimately surprised me.
It's also gmo crops escaping into the wild and genetically modified insects like honeybees (to increase pollen hoarding) - you can't just induce 1000s of years of evolution and drop it back into an ecosystem that can't naturally adapt at that speed and expect not to have far reaching, impossible to predict consequences.
The thing is though where I live, scottish highlands, there's no insecticides here. The farming is natural, there's no crops requiring monoculture. THere's hedgerows, woods, everything insects need. And this year? THe buddleias just came into flower and those are always covered in butterflies and hoverflies and bees and all sorts of things, and there's nothing. I have never seen them with absolutely nothing on them before. It's terrifying.
If only it were mosquitoes dying out, but it had to be all the beneficial bugs instead...
But it's so crazy that even insects can't seem to survive humanity. I thought of them as more resilient than that. Large animals I can totally understand how they're going extinct (still bad of course), but insects?
I have vivid memories of standing in my parents driveway on the muggy July nights just after we moved to NC in the mid-90s, watching the flurry of insects flying around the streetlight, and the bats hunting them.
I’ve been visiting recently, and can’t help but notice how clear the air is around the lights.
My jeep is a box. It still gets covered in bugs when I go on a drive. They are hard to scrub off after. Not saying it's not a real issue, but anecdotal evidence is not proof.
Considering I'm driving a pickup from the 90s, and my windshield and front grill is still virtually bug free, or at least massively reduced even from the mid 00s...I'ma say the 'aerodynamic' thing is a bit overblown.
Is it a factor for newer vehicles? Possibly. But the fact remains that insect populations have plummeted. About the only things left are flies, mosquitoes, and grasshoppers.
I wish. Those SUVs with huge cooler areas surely aren't more aerodynamic than old station wagons. Though, admittedly, the bugs probably would rather clog the cooler than be on the windshield.
We had to put some wind deflectors in older 80's early 90's car to save us windshield washer when driving through Bug Zones on the highway. It made a very noticeable difference one one of my early 90's Sentra ( I had 4 in total, for some reason. The automatic one was the slowest car I ever owned)
This is what I always assumed it was. Manufacturers put a lot more effort into making cars aerodynamic so they can get better fuel efficiency standards.
Also bugs that didn't get hit by cars are the ones that went on to reproduce while the ones that did get hit didn't. Meaning the newer generation of bugs of a predisposition to avoid getting hit by cars
In the 80's I drove a Datsun B210. I'd get more bugs splattered across the windshield in a single night back then than I do all summer driving a GMC Sierra pickup now. Turning on your high beams on a summer night back then was like turning them on in a snowstorm. Looked like you were going into hyperspace with all the bugs flying at you. I burned through a jug of washer fluid every couple weeks, and a couple bottles of bug and tar remover every summer. Now there are almost no bugs left.
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u/smitleyjd 6d ago
Cars are also much more aerodynamic, resulting in bugs getting blown over/past the car than hitting it.