Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/21/dead-bugs-on-windshields/

by bookofjoe • 4 years ago

420 364 4 years ago

bookofjoe• 4 years ago

I remember a drive from Devils Lake, ND to Rugby, ND (~60 miles) less than a decade ago. The bugs were so bad I had to stop and clean my windshield twice because I couldn't see.

jrumbut• 4 years ago

I had the same thing happen in very rural Northern Quebec, plus the road construction workers wore bee keeper type outfits.

lb417• 4 years ago

Monsanto.

np-• 4 years ago

Totally anecdotally: I have to scrub a thick layer of bugs off my motorcycle helmet after every single ride but almost never off the windshield of my car. Though this could also be a function of where I’m going (typically rural back roads on the bike and highway/interstate in the car), but even then I’m still not sure, since there is a decent amount of overlap in local routes

Moru• 4 years ago

Yes, the modern car windshields have a much flatter angle than old cars but it's not as news worthy. :-)

bamboozled3• 4 years ago

So better aerodynamics is squashing less bugs ?

I think this is real, I'm traveling and borrowed a relatives car which is much lower profile and more sleek than my old Jeep. I was driving through the countryside the other day and there were a lot of critters flying about, I was surprised that often, they'd sort of just get "pushed" over the top of the car. Not sure what happened to them after that but yeah!

boffinism2• 4 years ago

I mean, it's quite news worthy. The Washington Post dedicated large parts of an article on insect population decline to exploring it.

andirk• 4 years ago

Implies a VW Bus gets the most bugs? Bart and Sideshow Bob got a lot of bugs on the Wright Brothers plane [0] .

[0] https://youtu.be/RD77nyoEyug?t=112

pcl• 4 years ago

Interestingly enough, the article itself discusses aerodynamics.

klabb3• 4 years ago

They account for this factor, and several others, in the study. There's an world wide decimation of insect populations, and it has received minor coverage relative to its likely significance to ecosystems.

actionfromafar3• 4 years ago

The old cars I ride in don't get the bug salad or yore either.

Roark662• 4 years ago

There is nothing that gets one to zip up their motorcycle jacket quicker than getting hit with a large bug in the chest while doing 100kmh(60mph).

criddell• 4 years ago

When I got my first motorcycle, the thing that surprised me the most was how much rain hurts on bare skin at 60 mph.

forgotmypw17• 4 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18222888

once_inc• 4 years ago

So in our little thought experiment, (...), our bugs-per-windshield metric would have been cut by two-thirds even if the number of bugs had remained constant. And it hasn’t! It’s fallen precipitously.

This could also be a function of bugs flying less over busy roads, and decreasing in volume at the places where most cars drive. If so, that would explain the precipitous fall in splats. I do not think that this is very far-fetched, since most animals instinctively begin to shun areas when predators are introduced.

iancmceachern4• 4 years ago

Aerodynamics, cars are far more aerodynamic now days.

RamblingCTO5• 4 years ago

I can attest that. I drive a Land Rover Defender which, you know, has the aerodynamics of a wall. It's full of bugs after driving on the highway for more than 30 minutes.

iancmceachern4• 4 years ago

I love defenders, I had a series 1 discovery that I simply loved, I was even able to successfully complete Hella Revenge in Moab with it 100% stock

Pephers• 4 years ago

Sadly, also in Denmark as the article mentions, I’ve only had to clean my windshield once this summer (by clean I mean scrubbing, I do use the windshield washer more often). 1995 Defender.

I only have to look outside at my neighbors winter wheat field to find one of the reasons. It’s been sprayed 3 times already this fall after sowing.

boffinism2• 4 years ago

How do you feel about the rebuttal to this claim in the article? Particularly the decline in licence plate splats?

iancmceachern4• 4 years ago

It seems like they debunked my theory in the article, apologies

anonymous_sorry• 4 years ago

The article discusses this at length, concluding that it is not a major factor.

hourago• 4 years ago

Many smart people we spoke with, including entomologists and wheat farmers, speculated that maybe the cars have changed, not the bugs. As vehicles become more aerodynamic, the thinking goes, their increasingly efficient airflow whisks the bugs away from the windshield instead of creating head-on splatters.
But when we called experts in the arcane art of computational fluid dynamics, they sounded skeptical. Yes, today’s sleek sedans can have half the drag of the land boats that ruled the road just a generation or two ago. But that improved airflow won’t do much for a bug.
For starters, many aero improvements happen on the rear of the car rather than the bug-hitting front. Consider the optimally aerodynamic teardrop shape, with its blunt, round front and long, sleek tail. But more importantly, it’s just surprisingly difficult to use air to push a bug out of the way of an onrushing Buick.
If it were possible to design a bug- and debris-proof car, then Kevin Golsch probably would have done it by now. An auto-industry veteran, Golsch has spent decades around wind tunnels, both real and simulated, and is now vice president for strategic fluid design and simulation at Altair, a global tech company that makes simulation and AI software. Altair’s customers include massive automakers that would be thrilled if airflow could protect both windshields and the delicate sensors on self-driving cars.
“From an aerodynamic standpoint, I’ve done a lot of studies on contamination of sensors, especially for autonomous vehicles,” Golsch said. “And I think most everybody’s given up on trying to influence what happens at the vehicle level for dust and particles and rain.”
Consider raindrops. They’re about the size and weight of a larger insect, but nobody thinks fewer raindrops hit our windshields these days. Any forces that cleared our windshield of bugs would presumably do the same for rain and road debris, Golsch said.
To be sure, one element of modern auto design could be reducing bug spatter. Windshields today often have a lower slope than the more-vertical front windows of yesteryear, and while the broader shift to SUVs and trucks with bigger, steeper windshields will negate some of that, it might reduce splats for people who are driving similar vehicles.
“If the windshield was laid back slightly more than another windshield, that bug may have a chance of just skipping off and going up over the windshield rather than hitting the windshield,” Golsch said. “It might be a glancing blow at the last second rather than a splat.”
But we also saw 60 percent declines in insects between 2004 and 2021 in a British study from the Kent Wildlife Trust, which built on a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds effort in which thousands of people used “splatometers” to measure bug splatters on license plates, which aren’t much affected by aerodynamic advances elsewhere.

rabuse• 4 years ago

My motorcycle helmet visor says otherwise. Rarely don't ever have them smeared all over, even on a shorter ride.

vlovich123• 4 years ago

To everyone replying “aerodynamics”, I’ve had the same car for about 9 years now and the drive along the 5 from Bay Area to LA feels like there’s fewer bugs on my windshield (granted not recorded diligently for scientific purposes but whereas before I’d need to scrub the windshield at least once halfway these days I can drive all the way and still don’t need a wash at the end)

Same goes for the argument that bugs have evolved to migrate away from the roads - the 5 has been a busy thruway for a long time with lots of cars and trucks.

The article is short but says scientists have clear data that populations have plummeted and the larger vehicle consumer trend + more people on the road means that there’s fewer bugs to encounter per windshield on top of that.

actionfromafar3• 4 years ago

Also, the "bugs evolve away" would need evolutionary pressure being involved. But the explanation I got was the available biomass for bugs is such that any chunk of bugs killed on the road was easily filled by other bugs eating their lunch and procreating.

orlp2• 4 years ago

Also, the "bugs evolve away" would need evolutionary pressure being involved

I do not claim that evolution is the reason for the reduction in dead bugs, but if "go near road" has a increased risk of death due to automobiles, there absolutely is selective pressure to not "go near road". Bugs that get killed by cars don't procreate (again) after all.

titzer4• 4 years ago

Also note that "species are evolving to adapt to XYZ" really means "everything that can't deal with XYZ is dying". If the ecosystem just doesn't have any species that can deal with XYZ, then that part of the ecosystem just dies.

deafpolygon• 4 years ago

What if, with more cars and bigger windshields, we're just grabbing less and less of these bugs due to more of them being killed by other cars / trucks?

Tagbert• 4 years ago

The environment around those roads contains millions of other insects. The amount killed by cars is a tiny percentage. That would obscure any affect from the small increase in automobiles or their windshields.

xattt• 4 years ago

To everyone replying “aerodynamics”, I’ve had the same car for about 9 years now and the drive along the 5 from Bay Area to LA feels like there’s fewer bugs on my windshield (granted not recorded diligently for scientific purposes but whereas before I’d need to scrub the windshield at least once halfway these days I can drive all the way and still don’t need a wash at the end)

Hasn’t California had extremely climate events over the last decade (wildfires, ongoing drought)? Given that bugs tend to be sensitive to air quality, this would likely local population decline which would then lead to the effect you’ve observed.

I welcome anyone to come to Prince Edward Island and enjoy the many, many mosquitos and midges our Island has to offer. They can be heard as small “pops” while driving.

titzer4• 4 years ago

A boom of one particular species is not necessarily indicative of a healthy ecosystem. We don't welcome algal blooms as signs of life bouncing back; rather, they are brutally disruptive to ecosystems. They leave mass death in their wake. Without a closer study of which species you're observing (they might be human-borne invasive species after all), it's not really easy to say if what you're seeing is healthy at all. And the timescales are important. This year or this decade might be a boom and 20 years from now they've managed to deplete their environment of resources and crash.

saltcured• 4 years ago

Yeah, I certainly don't doubt that there are global changes going on, but that particular drive along I-5 is confounded by many other local variables.

I too notice changes in the amount of bugs having driven that route periodically for about 30 years. Due to economic and weather conditions over decades, there are very obvious changes in whether you are driving by grassland, irrigated crops and orchards, defunct and desiccated crops and orchards, or graded and developed human environments. The road has also widened and gotten much more traffic.

The general trend is more human presence year over year, but the agricultural activity is more cyclic. As I understand it, these areas are only viable to irrigate in wet years, because the senior water rights are held and used much further north and east along the CA-99 corridor. In droughts, these more recently developed farms dry up first.

It's also of course very seasonal, with bug populations booming and then disappearing much like wild flowers and migrating bird flocks along the same route. In the heaviest bug carnage periods, driving this section of I-5 can be like driving through the US midwest during a grasshopper or cicada boom.

oxfordmale• 4 years ago

Same tests have been run on licence plates. As they have remained in a similar position for decades, aerodynamics is clearly not the major contributing factor.

lm284692• 4 years ago

Same goes for the argument that bugs have evolved to migrate away from the roads

There are many studies in all kind of environments, even in the middle of the woods, in natural reserves; insects are going down both in term of diversity and numbers everywhere

They're being evolved away by pollution

jvm___• 4 years ago

NY state has a long running study where on July 15th every year they would put up a super bright lighthouse bulb in the middle of the woods and put it over a tarp. After they night they'd weigh the physical mass of insect life that had come to the light, and died, overnight.

I forget the exact %, but they'd seen a 50 or 60 percent reduction in mass since the 70's, some depressingly high number.

another_story• 4 years ago

I actually find it rather interesting how many people here, in a forum I generally assume to be better informed than elsewhere, seem wholly unaware of the dramatic decrease in insects over the last few decades.

aredox• 4 years ago

Strong "I am very smart" contrarian energy here.

Beltalowda8• 4 years ago

People who think they know better are more likely to comment than those who will simply say "huh, interesting!" You will often get a somewhat biased set of comments.

stinos7• 4 years ago

I also find it rather interesting to see talks about insect decline while it's only one part of the larger issue, rated by some as important as the climate crisis: the biodiversity crisis. Dramatic decreases are happening for way more species than just insects.

fireflash38• 4 years ago

I mean, hop into any threat remotely related to COVID and you'll see people come out in swarms of common science denial.

Just because people might be knowledgeable about certain technologies doesn't make them knowledgeable about anything else. In fact I'd argue that it heavily biases them to making more mistakes in other fields, especially considering that many tech problems are 'solved' by going to a search engine -- that's not a good way to do science.

fullstop3• 4 years ago

The last time this was discussed I found some articles showing that the more boxy and angular windows of older vehicles were less likely to have bugs smashed on them. This is why these studies often use license plate splatters to get a better count -- that really hasn't changed.

nawgz3• 4 years ago

some articles showing that the more boxy and angular windows of older vehicles were less likely to have bugs smashed on them

Do you mean "more likely"?

This is why these studies often use license plate splatters to get a better count -- that really hasn't changed

Do you claim the amount of license plate splatters remains consistent today as, say, 30 years ago, or some other time frame? I think this claim really needs to be sourced, can you produce these studies you allude to? Thanks

jiggawatts• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring

lynguist2• 4 years ago

I’ve noticed the same with snails. When I was a child in the 90s, the sidewalks were full of snails, and during a 10 minute stroll, I’d often find tens of small snails.

Today I find 1 or 2 snails after rainfall, if at all.

onion2k• 4 years ago

Do you still live in the same place you grew up?

lynguist2• 4 years ago

Yes.

psychphysic2• 4 years ago

With snails I suspect its more to do with how a child behaves and an adult.

I collect snails from my garden to eat and numbers are fairly similar despite my occasionally trying to control them with pellets some years.

Similarly with the original article I only got half way down but clearly it's more to do with cars than insect numbers.

marcyb5st2• 4 years ago

Fireflies for me. I live in Italy and between the vineyards it was full of them. Now I occasionally see one or two. It's a pity not only because it is a concrete sign of habitat degradation, but it was also mesmerizing to walk and have them filing around you. Something my kids won't experience.

vidarh• 4 years ago

Between two long trips to Italy in my childhood, the fireflies we could see from the terrace of a small B&B we stayed at in a small village not far from Genoa is one of my most enduring memories.

mealkh• 4 years ago

For quite some time I thought fireflies were made up, as I have never in my life (and I do live in a rural region) seen one.

scld• 4 years ago

I'm sure it's a regional impact on different types of creatures. I don't notice windshield bugs but my back patio in the city gets dozens of snails after every rainfall to this day.

Gordonjcp2• 4 years ago

You can come here and take away all the snails you want. It's impossible to walk around at night without stepping on them, and they have utterly destroyed my garden. I've never seen a crop of kale or broccoli fail in 30 years until this year.

glanzwulf2• 4 years ago

I guess whatever reason it is local, because last summer drove from Lisbon to Berlin and this summer drove from Berlin to Milan and every time I stopped at a gas station I had to clean the car because boy did it have A LOT of dead bugs.

throwaway24124• 4 years ago

Completely anecdotal, but this does seem to be a North American issue, I did a two week roadtrip through Croatia this year and I had to stop just to clean bugs off the car more often than stopping just for gas. I've done quite a few roadtrips in America and never once had to stop just to clean bugs off the windshield.

glanzwulf2• 4 years ago

Yeah, I do quite a lot of road trips and that is always a pain. Thankfully all gas stations even have the bucket of water and the scraper to clean off the bugs.

pmontra• 4 years ago

It's possible that it's happening more in NA, but the article started with a research made on Denmark roads 1996-2017 with a 80-97% fall of insect splats in the period.

Anecdotally, I hardly had to clean my windscreen when I was living in a city. I'm living in a small town with fields all around it now and I never have a clean windscreen anymore. However nothing like the one in the first picture of the article. That's how my front license plate looks like.

globalise832• 4 years ago

Probably a large part is due to the increased frequency of cars inside broadly the same volume of road space. Assuming that you have the same number of bugs per m^3 and the same number of bugs entering per m^3 per minute as before, then bugs splattered per car will change in inverse proportion to cars per minute.

badtension2• 4 years ago

I think you grossly overestimate how much space does car infrastructure hold in relation to literally millions of km^2 of free space around it. Assuming your observation is right its impact would be minuscule.

globalise832• 4 years ago

But we're not discussing the free space around roads, I'm talking about the width of the road X length of road X 2.5m where the bugs get splatted. If there are more cars travelling in that space, fewer bugs will be splatted by each car even if the level overall remains the same.

lm284692• 4 years ago

That or the fact that insect population has been proven to decline over and over pretty much everywhere in the world including natural reserves

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations

IncRnd• 4 years ago

There are fewer bugs that hit the windshield even when on a rural interstate.

There are many areas that have cars but aren't in the middle of cities or in areas with high traffic.

titzer4• 4 years ago

It's partly due to mowing alongside highways and medians. That is primarily motivated by keeping the number of small animals down, reducing fire risk, and other reasons, but fewer tall grasses means drastically fewer bugs. Also, pesticides and general global insect decline. This is not primarily due to aerodynamics.

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

It's smart to keep it maintained for safety reasons, but that doesn't explain the full story - there's bound to be plenty of unkempt grassland and whatnot further away from the road where insect populations SHOULD be thriving.

titzer4• 4 years ago

where insect populations SHOULD be thriving.

Oh, I know. It's not looking good for bugs globally because of a lot of reasons.

stinos7• 4 years ago

It's partly due to mowing alongside highways and medians. ... fewer tall grasses means drastically fewer bugs

This is way too general: in some countries and alongside specific highways, the state of grasslands is actually really good. Like: good enough to grow rare orchids and having >10 or >20 plant species/square meter. Because of correct mowing regimes for that vegetation type.

It also lacks nuance because as explained in another comment already: not mowing at all can make things worse. Which brings us to the tall grasses: meadows featuring a lot of tall grasses but hardly any other flowering plants have can have much less insects that meadows with a coverage of only like 20% grasses where the rest is taken by a diversity of flowering plants.

nspattak• 4 years ago

I bought my first motorcycle in 2004 and my 2nd in 2007. I rode 45k km with the first one over these 3 years (mostly on my island) and 80k km with the 2nd one between 2007-2015. I can confirm that the amount of bugs crashing on my helmet's visor is definitely less. I used to clean it after riding for an hour but now I can do 4-5-6h and still have no real need to clean it.

julienreszka• 4 years ago

There are so few bugs on YOUR windshield because they all decided to go on mine.

chs20• 4 years ago

Honestly, I had tons of bugs on my windshield this summer.

callesgg• 4 years ago

Evolution.

Insects that spend time on the open road have less chance of survival and reproduction than those that stay in their natural habitat.

alangibson2• 4 years ago

I recently went back to my hometown in the USA after a couple of decades away. I was struck by how there we're almost none of the fireflies, grasshoppers and assorted other bugs I'd chased as a kid. I chalked it up to being a nostalgic old man, but I've never shaken that feeling that something is definitely not right.

devmor• 4 years ago

I saw Fireflies for the first time two years ago after moving to the Southeast US.

I saw very few last year. I saw zero this year. I'm glad I got to experience them before they were all gone, I guess.

jay_kyburz• 4 years ago

My kids are 10 and 11 and the saw their first grasshopper last summer. They were everywhere when I was a kid. Christmas beetles are a rare find these days. I haven't seen a Bogon moth in years.

sarchertech• 4 years ago

Fireflies (we call them lightning bugs in the south) fluctuate yearly. Some years there are very few of them. It’s always been like that from talking to relatives.

INTPenis• 4 years ago

Sad and frightening to hear. Funny though but here in southern Sweden and Denmark I've had the opposite experience.

Sometime around 2018 I started noticing a lot of fireflies, in a park in the middle of a major city. Which was not normal to me. Since then I've noticed them almost every summer.

And on vacation in Denmark it's the same thing, the air is alive with life. It has its downsides too because there are more ticks than ever too.

A lot of cities here have started leaving grassy areas uncut, they just cut a path through it for people to walk on. Also Copenhagen has started building "walls" of twigs, encased in a wire mesh. These walls act as safe havens for all sorts of insects and small creatures.

Zigurd2• 4 years ago

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. On hot summer evenings the fireflies were spectacular. The cooler summers of New England meant many fewer fireflies. But, in the past couple of years I have noticed more of them where I now live.

nemo44x• 4 years ago

Could be because you aren’t there in the grass and fields actively looking for them. If you garden and spend time in it, it’s amazing what you find.

alangibson2• 4 years ago

I noticed it in my grandmother's backyard, so that variable was controlled. Then I noticed it pretty much in all my old haunts. Sample size N = 1, etc.

luxuryballs2• 4 years ago

5G and emf seems reasonable but will they turn it off for a few years and find out? nope

Nasrudith• 4 years ago

Anecdotal, but I was pleased to see fireflies returning after not seeing them post puberty. Not denying general trends at all but it makes me wonder what is the cause of counter examples. Maybe more neighbors not overgrooming their lawns or the local park's native species garden?

mod• 4 years ago

In the case of fireflies, they lay eggs in leaf litter. So you need some unkempt properties or wild land.

dunefox• 4 years ago

Seems like you were too successful in chasing them as a child. ;)

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

Previous related post (3 years ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18909650

scottmckenzie• 4 years ago

Have a drive in New Zealand. Plenty of bugs. Butterfly season can be harsh.

mustafabisic1• 4 years ago

I noticed that I didn't use "insect removal" mode on automatic car washes in like two years now. Even after long trips.

Gotta say it's a bit scary. Together with air temperature in Bosnia being 27 degrees celsius, definitely rings some bad alarms.

Totally a gut feeling, but those can be correct often.

Roark662• 4 years ago

Swallows. That and the fact wild animal populations swing widely to extremes sometimes. I have been paying close attention to swallows in recent few years and the numbers of them as well as the bugs they eat are skyrocketing in my area. When I moved to the area it was essentially empty field a couple hundred meters from anything. The farmer owning it converted a bit in the middle into residential building plots, a road was built, electricity hooked up etc. Most of the people that buy those plots do it as an investment so they don't do anything to them. I have observed over last 10 years how nature took over those plots. Hay that grows and is not mowed accumulates and besides being a fire hazard provides an environment for birds to nest in. Wild trees have grown to the point one wouldn't recognise it was a field a decade ago. I regularly have hedgehogs, hares, deer, lots of all kinds of birds (including a golden Eagle once). Every year there are huge numbers of swallows come in the spring. As of last 2 years there have been moose and even wild wolves. Yes, wolves, in a middle of Europe in 2022. I have photos of their dinner I once found in addition to other info.

People don't realise nature is very resilient and it will move into every area that is not polluted with toxins. Even with toxins or radiation (like the famous Chernobyl exclusion zone) nature evolves to deal with it.

mkl95• 4 years ago

An Occam's razorish answer is that there are fewer bugs nowadays in whatever area this phenomenon is observed. So a better question could be why are there fewer bugs?

LordHeini• 4 years ago

Having super quick evolution cycles, could it be that insects evolved to avoid roads?

I remember the story of a species of moths living in German industrial cities.

These were normally brown like tree bark but evolved to look like sooty brick in a few years.

Insects have ears (although highly varying in capability) which could lead them to avoid dangerous zones.

Anecdotally i would say i see fewer insects circling around lamps too.

goodpoint• 4 years ago

Having super quick evolution cycles, could it be that insects evolved to avoid roads?

No.

kapsi3• 4 years ago

These were normally brown like tree bark but evolved to look like sooty brick in a few years.

Because the brown ones got eaten. But that's different from evolving to recognize where a road is, which is maybe possible but probably would take thousands or millions of years.

myshpa• 4 years ago

Scary thing is how many people don't consider this to be scary.

If we were to blame anyone, we should blame ourselves. But I'll return to that in a moment.

We live in a complex system, so we can blame the political/financial system for providing wrong incentives, loans and subsidies to the big agriculture, based on profitability alone.

We can blame agriculture companies for sprayng millions of tons of poisons all over our countryside to keep profits up and costs down. When you're planting monocrops, and spraying it with pesti/herbicides, you're propagating environmental equivalents of deserts. Deserts leaking poisons not only on itself, but through whole nature (through wind & water cycle).

Both pesticides and herbicides are inbelievably poisonous not only to plants and pests, but also to other bugs (we all know at least about bees), to all other animals, the animals we feed with the produce, and in the end, even to humans. Those poisons' bioaccumulate and their neurodegenerative and hormons-altering effects are causing havoc not only in bugs, frogs and mice, but also in humans (parkinson, etc.).

The solution is something we're actively killing with our current agricultural practices. Biodiversity.

For example, we don't need to kill the mice with poisons. We can interplant trees into our fields to provide living space for predators (e.g. owls and foxes) to manage the mice population and not use the poisons to keep those predators alive.

We can't reasonably expect the return of an army of small farmers, providing local communities with poison-free grown food, not in a reasonable time frame we have until environmental collapse and/or extinction of key animal kinds (no pollinators, no birds, no small predators, more mice, more bad bugs and diseases, famines ...).

But what we can do, we can change our habits. We don't have to eat meat/dairy, which is incredibly land/resource/poison intensive (we would need 4+ earths to feed the world's population same diet as americans have). We don't have to feed other animal 20x more food than we would need only to eat its muscles. We don't have to cut down forests to grow meat (we would need 1/4 of the land to feed the population if everybody were to switch to a plant based diet), if we eat the plants ourselves and let the nature be and let it repair itself.

We can then change the political/financial/agricultural system through our own actions (buying/cooking/eating). When enough people do, there won't be the pressure to produce a much as we currently do, then we can legislate the change in the agriculture , forbid use of poisons, protect the ecosystems, reforest the earth, live in sync with the nature, stop exploiting everything (and living beings) with our need for financial gains.

Sorry for my bad english. Also, I'm in the system, it's monday, no time to write shorter comment, and no time to incorporate everything-that-is-wrong and everything-that-should-be-done. It's a complex system. But it can be solved in our own kitchens.

fleddr13• 4 years ago

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes.

Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years. Beetles: 75% decline since 1985. Ladybugs: 50% reduction in 20 years. Across the border in Germany: a 75% decline in flying insects since 1989.

It doesn't take much of a scientist to see the trend. I've been hiking the forests here multiple times per week for 20 years. You can clearly see how some groups are disappearing whilst others remain.

There's several root causes but the primary one is a lack of native plant diversity. Since agriculture over here is done in close proximity to forests, the soil becomes acid due to the nitrogen disposition. This benefits the growth of a handful of plants at the expense of all others. In some of our forests, the soil is now so acid that snails no longer develop a case and bird eggs collapse.

In this plant monoculture, insects depending on a specific host plant disappear. Outside (protected) forests, things aren't much better. Even the tiniest of strips of grass that would normally produce wildflowers, are aggressively mowed down. People's gardens are designed to be as hostile to insects as is possible.

Secondary reasons are invasive species and light pollution.

It's a sad state of affairs and one we should be deeply ashamed of. We're not talking about some iconic predator requiring hundreds of acres of wild forest just to survive. We're talking about insects that require little space, healthy soil, a flower, and for it to be left alone. We can't even offer that.

newsclues2• 4 years ago

Is there a push to move to smaller regenerative farms occurring?

WJW• 4 years ago

Yes, but the farmers are (obviously) not in favor and have been protesting heavily.

chickenimprint• 4 years ago

How would that work? We don't have enough land as it is. And we can't pay for the additional labor small farms need, or food inflation will explode.

Making agriculture unproductive will just push the demand outwards like a beaker of toxic reactants boiling over. We can't impose more trade restrictions on foreign agricultural goods either, for fear of a trade war.

This hopeless romanticism of small organic mom-and-pop farming is misguided. The only solution I see is huge, highly efficient, automated, but also highly regulated farms. That, and veganism.

zip1234• 4 years ago

Probably better to stop propping up the small farms and let the unproductive land be reclaimed by nature. Extensively use pest resistant GMO crops to increase yields on less land and overall lessen the land needed for farming. At the same time, lessening sprawl would be quite helpful. I see plenty of people 'move out to the country' and then spray pesticides over their entire 5 acre lawn.

jgraham• 4 years ago

It's good to see a comment that recognises that this "bug splatter on the windshield" data is mostly just an easily observed hook to connect the measured declines to people's everyday life experiences.

The topic seems to come up here ever few months, and there's always a significant percentage of the discussion devoted to aerodynamic effects, or changes in insect distribution specific to roadside habitats. Those converstations often feel like "middlebrow dismissal": people who think the fact they can come up with a plausible alternate explaination for the data given a few seconds thought means it's likely that the studies are totally flawed and can be ignored.

Meanwhile if you dig in to the actual evidence, the studies based on vehicle data show a small negative correlation between vehicle age and number of impacted flying insects (i.e. older cars have slightly fewer splats, not more). More importantly, the general trends of declining biomass of (especially, but not only) flying insects reproduce over a wide range of methodologies and habitats. For skeptical readers, there are some links to studies in a previous comment I made on a previous thread on this same general topic [1].

Having said that, I think you've missed one of the big factors that's likely to contribute to the decline: the widespread use of insecticides (especially) and herbicides in industrial agriculture. Studies on bees show that even insects exposed to something much lower than the LD50 of certain insecticides experience behavioural changes that dramatically decrease their survival rates. And because "pest" insects typicaly have short lifecycles and rapid reproduction rates, they're often best placed to evolve tolerances for the insecticides, so there's pressure on farmers to use more and more to get the same effect.

For anyone who's interested in an introduction to this topic aimed at the general public (like me!), but written by a Professor of Entomology, I can recommend Slient Earth [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31278206 [2] https://bookshop.org/p/books/silent-earth-averting-the-insec...

fleddr13• 4 years ago

I happen to study/photograph insects as an amateur and can casually confirm the collateral damage pesticides have on insect life.

A common manifestation of it is to find lethargic insects. Bodily fully intact and seeming healthy, yet barely able to move. Insects normally skittish that you can simply pick up. I'm not talking about insects at the end of their life cycle or them being very cold. There's something very wrong with these individuals, I believe studies suggest their brains are messed up from the pesticides.

thereddaikon• 4 years ago

insecticides kill insects?

Big if true. Sounds like it working as designed.

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung2• 4 years ago

You mean The Quiet Earth?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdHoYtBzdX0

Cryptonic3• 4 years ago

I think it might be the same disinformation scheme as the climate science "The individual must/can fix it" - No policy must force industries to find other ways to make a profit with agriculture. There are natural ways to deal with insects and unwanted plants.

dutchbrit2• 4 years ago

It’s also sad to see what people are doing to their gardens over here. Fake grass, no plants/just bricks. Not to mention the municipalities mowing nice patches of grass/plants/flowers where insects thrive.

Beltalowda8• 4 years ago

One thing I've noticed after moving back to the Netherlands is how absolutely obsessed people are with keeping things "tidy". In a way, it's nice I guess, at least sometimes, but it comes with some serious costs too. This is not unique to the Netherlands, but we're probably the best (or worst?) at it, except maybe Singapore.

stinos7• 4 years ago

Not to mention the municipalities mowing nice patches of grass/plants/flowers where insects thrive.

That lacks an important nuance: in most circumstances (regarding soil type/nitrogen deposition), not mowing at all would lead to those patches being overgrown by fast growers leading to less plant diversity. Can happen in as little as a year or 2. So the mowing itself is not the problem, it's the amount, how and when.

thanatos519• 4 years ago

It's crazy! On one side, I have a neighbour with all slate and concrete backyard, and a barrier at the top of the fence (to keep the fancy cats in 'o_O ) covered with plastic vines. I think they have one actual living tree and maybe a flowerpot.

Fortunately, on the other side ... I have the head of the groene commissie (neighbourhood gardening enthusiastc) and a beautiful tended garden. Mine is the most natural: a barely-tended jungle which gets trimmed and brushed once a year. We have hedgehogs!

We installed ~200m^2 of green roofs in the neighbourhood and there are bug hotels all over the place so we are doing relatively well. Quite a few different varieties of bees.

All this green absorbs a lot of heat, and manages rainwater which is important at 0 above sea level and 2m below the nearby canal.

DonaldFisk• 4 years ago

It would be nice if people realized that they can have a low-maintenance, inexpensive, and insect-friendly garden full of pretty wild flowers, by planting a perennial meadow. This needs to be cut once a year.

In the UK, you can buy perennial meadow seed mixes from https://www.scotiaseeds.co.uk , https://wildseed.co.uk , https://www.wildflower.co.uk, and several other companies.

Elsewhere, there should be equivalents.

lettergram2• 4 years ago

While I don’t disagree with those two points I don’t know if they’re the primary cause.

I also think it’s important to put it into context.

1. These insects weren’t really robust to begin with. Take the monarch butterfly in the North America. They actually needed primarily milkweed to survive. A single point of failure (milkweed) can cause the population to collapse. When we put up houses and converted land to farms, you’re correct we killed many of the native species, but those species were HIGHLY tuned to a particular niche. In 100-200 years it’s likely the insects that survived will re-occupy new niches.

2. Insects typically need a much smaller range to survive, so hikes in the same woods as when you were a kid doesn’t add up. Unless there was another massive environmental issue - such as pesticides or chemicals like DDT which have a secondary impact. Personally, that bird egg analogy sounds exactly like what the US saw with DDT and the collapse of the eagle population.

3. In the 1950s in the Midwest there had already been farmland all over for 50+ years. Same with Ireland (for hundreds). The insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last few decades. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough historical data to confirm what it is exactly. Even in the 1970s you’d have solid layers of bugs on windshields driving between cornfields. Now, nothing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_population...

To me, this indicates a chemical or set there of, as the most likely culprits.

EDIT: DET -> DDT

vidanay• 4 years ago

DDT not DET

data_maan• 4 years ago

In 100-200 years it’s likely the insects that survived will re-occupy new niches.

Do you have any data to back this up?

Also, the problem is that not many insects ARE going to survive.

The insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last few decades.

This is probably outright misleading, since you don't have the data prior to those decades. The common mistake is that people use their own lifespan as a measure for things.

---

Everybody talks about the gender pay gap and ethnic diversity these days, but biodiversity is not on the radar :(

Beltalowda8• 4 years ago

In the 1950s in the Midwest there had already been farmland all over for 50+ years. Same with Ireland (for hundreds). The insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last few decades. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough historical data to confirm what it is exactly. Even in the 1970s you’d have solid layers of bugs on windshields driving between cornfields. Now, nothing.

This assumes that farming methods have remained identical since the 1950s or 70s, but they haven't. I don't know if the parent poster is correct, but I don't think is a good argument unless you also account for changes in agricultural practices in the last 50+ years.

kapsi3• 4 years ago

What's gonna happen in 100 years? Are the insects waiting for something?

fleddr13• 4 years ago

I strongly object to the framing where a species is considered logical to go extinct for it was not "robust" enough.

The words "specialist" and "niche" are incredibly misplaced as it comes to insects. Consider butterflies, many depending on specific host plants. The host plant is in decline hence the butterfly disappears.

Weak species. Not "robust". The point that is being missed here is that the host plant is supposed to be widely available in any half-decent ecosystem. It isn't rare, would normally be widespread, and it has very low needs. Just a tiny bit of space and healthy soil.

We're not wiping out specialists, we're wiping out the underlying habitat and ecosystem altogether.

bmitc14• 4 years ago

That is a very human-centric viewpoint and a very strange one at that. It's almost egocentric.

Were big cats such as mountain lions and bobcats not robust enough in America? Because they've been eradicated due to habitat loss.

Is it really a surprise that animals that have evolved over millions of years to fit within the balance of nature are having difficulty adapting in just decades to humanity's technology destruction of that balance? The fact that some are able to make it through that imbalance is not a justification.

It's weird that you basically seem to blame evolution. And it's not just about specific populations. It's all about their interactions and relationships. We do not fully understand how all these things tie together as a system. So much of it is disappearing, we really have no idea what could happen to our ecosystems. For the most part, it cannot be good.

I am in general seriously concerned about soil and insect health. We take leaves and grass and native plants off of land and then instead needlessly dump water and fertilizer in their place because what's left is not self-sustaining. It's literally the most wasteful process you can think of for managing land, and yet we do it in full force.

I planted native plants and let things grow up in my yard this year, and it's amazing how popular the areas get with insects. This is just one year. Next year, I am hoping for much more, especially now that I know what I'm doing for the most part.

pfdietz2• 4 years ago

An additional problem for monarch butterflies is a pair of introduced species, both swallow-worts. These are in the milkweed family, and they induce the butterflies to lay eggs on them, but the caterpillars die after only a few days.

I wonder how common this sort of thing is. Insects evolve to feed on certain plants, and not feed on others, but invasives could screw that up.

TomSwirly• 4 years ago

These insects weren’t really robust to begin with. Take the monarch butterfly in the North America.

This a horrifying sentiment.

The modern monarch butterfly as a species is two million years old. In less than 200 years, we have mostly wiped it off the map, and the excuse is, "They weren't really robust to begin with"?

donkeyd8• 4 years ago

Wow, it's refreshing to see a Dutch person write down the impact of nitrogen as facts. Around me, its seems like slowly everyone is starting to doubt/deny the impact of nitrogen and whether it's something we need to care about. I'm starting to feel less at home in this country by the day because of it (and all the upside down flags consequently).

fleddr13• 4 years ago

It's a worldwide thing. An urbanized population does not care about nature. At all. Modern life is almost fully abstracted away from it, and it seems fine to destroy it for as long as our delicate lifestyle remains intact.

Every once in a while, we watch a documentary like Planet Earth. It inspires even the most cynical stoic. And we feel terrible about our negative role.

But the next day we go on as usual. And as soon as a tiny thing is asked of us to better the course, we resist like a maniac.

naasking6• 4 years ago

Around me, its seems like slowly everyone is starting to doubt/deny the impact of nitrogen and whether it's something we need to care about.

I'm not sure why that's surprising. Our food supply depends on using nitrogen at the moment. You can't just ban it cold-turkey without transitioning to an alternative that doesn't threaten the food supply. Particularly with inflation issues, further destabilizing the food supply is insane at this time. The whole climate change agenda will be in jeopardy if this isn't handled well.

leokennis2• 4 years ago

The farmers' protests are insane. They either flat out deny science, or frame biodiversity as some "left wing bleeding heart liberal" hobby.

Despite that they get offered millions to stop their farming activities.

Despite that they dump asbestos on highways and threaten politicians by visiting their homes.

And despite that our politicians cheer them on.

It really is the worst of times.

geysersam• 4 years ago

I'm surprised you didn't mention pesticide usage as one of the reasons. Or is that not an important factor?

fleddr13• 4 years ago

It most definitely is. But even without pesticides, insects cannot survive without plant diversity. At least most groups can't.

toss13• 4 years ago

Yup. Visited the US Midwest (Minnesota) recently and driving from the airport city to another smaller city, started going out into farmland.

At first, it seemed like a nice bucolic change. But soon, it took on a far darker aspect - this was a barren monoculture, as far as the eye could see, for dozens of miles. Where to the birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and insects live? The land is not only covered with chemicals to kill or repel any now-unwelcome residents, but there is simply no usable habitat (and a thin row of trees every mile or so doesn't count).

It was a truly dystopian experience, and more so by knowing that this goes on for thousands of square miles. This is not our grandparent's farmland anymore. This is not nature. This is one species becoming a literal plague on the planet. It is not sustainable.

anon848736282• 4 years ago

At one point during the development of California agriculture, there was an idea that farms should only be 160 acres in size, since that was what was manageable and profitable for a smallholder family. I wonder what the land would be like if we had managed to enforce that. There would probably be more crop diversity at least, and habitats in between the farms.

Kind of like anti-trust enforcement for the land itself

fleddr13• 4 years ago

Yes, we call them billiard sheets. People for leisure cycle through these areas and thoroughly enjoy all this "greenery". A day spent in "nature".

You're looking at poison and death.

moffkalast• 4 years ago

some groups are disappearing whilst others remain

Speaking of those that remain, I can say beyond reasonable doubt that there is an insane percentage increase in stinkbug populations in recent years. Fuckers get absolutely everywhere.

bmitc14• 4 years ago

And what's crazy is that everyone thinks it's going to be electric cars that somehow saves us. When the fact of the matter is there is a ton of stuff we can start doing today that would positively impact the environment.

It's pretty easy:

* Restore lawn areas to native plants: small (wildflowers), medium (bushes), big (trees)

* For areas that are kept as lawn, simply mow less. Allow plants to flower. Don't treat clover as evil. Support multiple grass types. Stop using chemical fertilizers and stop trying to feed the grass. Feed the soil with organic fertilizers and compost.

That's it! It reduces maintenance costs and time, reduces the use of gasoline, reduces noise pollution, and vastly improves soil health, insect and wildlife health, and increases pollination of our own food. It's a literal win-win.

And yet, no one does it. They turn their lawns into wastelands and never even use them. I've heard that lawns should be compared to deserts but that even that is disregarding the biodiversity that deserts have over lawns.

namaria10• 4 years ago

There is no salvation. Whatever was Earth before human civilization is in a death spiral. What comes next is anyone's guess. Elites are massing wealth to get off planet, and when the mass migrations really start and mid income countries start becoming failed states on their path, I hope you are in a place that can hold you safe for the remainder of your time here.

Cryptonic3• 4 years ago

Fun fact. In Germany this decline is measured in nature reserves.

The petrochemical pesticides play a big roll.

Just forbid them.

fleddr13• 4 years ago

I'm totally with you.

I'm annoyed by the climate change (CO2) narrative. It is far too narrow. Rather we should be talking about an umbrella of unsustainability that includes wildlife decimation, biodiversity collapsing, pollution, overfishing, deforestation, water and air quality.

We shouldn't just live in a way that expels less CO2, we should live in a way that doesn't annihilate the biosphere.

And yes, gardens are a great personal way to make a start. Mine too has native flowers which attract lots of insects, in turn attracting birds and bats. Plus some mini ponds. It's far less work compared to a sterile garden whilst much more fun.

zikduruqe• 4 years ago

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-is-our-obsession...

This is a good read/listen.

garfieldnate• 4 years ago

I was surprised when I moved into a German apartment that my landlord apologized about their being moss between the tiles on our patio. My honest response was, "oh no, moss looks better than an empty crack." I was really surprised when I for the first time saw people outside literally using blow-torches to kill moss in their driveway cracks. The dislike of clover is a really strange one for me, too. When I was growing up I loved the clover patches in the yard; they're like green clouds floating across the lawn, and the honeysuckle brings happy honey bees. Dandylions are pretty, too, admittedly more so in the yellow phase than the gray phase. But then they make nice toys! Generally speaking I find the natural aesthetic more beautiful and more serene than the golf course look.

troyvit• 4 years ago

And yet, no one does it. They turn their lawns into wastelands and never even use them. I've heard that lawns should be compared to deserts but that even that is disregarding the biodiversity that deserts have over lawns.

This was true for me for a long time. We had a lawn, and we had kids, and I believed that kids w/out a lawn was a travesty. Special lady friend was like, "dude we're surrounded by lawns," and it's true. There are 2 parks within walking distance of here and a big plot of grass at the local church. We killed the lawn, the kids didn't care, and I just haul them to the park. Still working on better habitat but it's coming along. And yeah as you say the exciting stuff going on in the soil and above ground is just amazing. Wild beans (not edible but pretty), edibles like dock, orach, dandelions & mallow ... just all kinds of stuff.

alexitosrv• 4 years ago

Your last paragraph nailed it! It's a shame. Today HN is on roll of realistic but pessimistic landscape that hits hard.

pfdietz2• 4 years ago

I wonder if it's some introduced wide spectrum insect pathogen. Sort of like that fungus that's devastating amphibians around the world? If so, the part of the world that pathogen came from would not be seeing these declines, since the insects there would have long before evolved to deal with it (as amphibians in SE Asia, I think it was, apparently have done with that fungus.)

Possibly some strain of Wolbachia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia

unglaublich• 4 years ago

Pesticides and crop mono-cultures. There is no place for insects to live.

When 0.1% of humans dies of a virus, we call it a disaster. When 50% of insects dies, we don't give a damn.

Beltalowda8• 4 years ago

I actually don't care at all if an insect lives or dies. Insects do not have emotions; no other insects mourn if one dies. This makes them markedly different from humans and other animals; insects are little more than machines and from a moral perspective much closer to bacteria than, say, mice.

The only reason I care is because of the broader ecological effects. I don't care whether my gut microbes live or die either, if it wasn't for the health effects it would have on me.

luch• 4 years ago

fascinating answer from someone who chose the nickname "beltalowda"

otabdeveloper43• 4 years ago

Ants are certainly smarter than mice.

Ants also have a complex range of psychological responses. (Not sure I'd call them "emotions" since we're obviously too distantly related to them to have a meaningful reference here, but whatever.)

Der_Einzige• 4 years ago

This thinking reminds me of the moral crisis that lagoshi from beastars has of the idea of killing an insect.

The scene is very well done. His imagination of the insect anthropomorphized is absolutely fascinating...

Deegy• 4 years ago

I know what you mean. The foundational support beams on my house are starting to rot away. I don't care how they feel, but I hope my house stays upright.

root_axis• 4 years ago

Insects do not have emotions

Why wouldn't they?

dsfyu404ed• 4 years ago

Insect populations are declining in places like New England and the upper midwest despite farming both declining and finding more efficient ways to use fertilizer and pesticides on the same timeline.

If we're going down the road of human introduced chemical toxins (like pesticide pollution) I think a fair bit of blame also deserves to be laid at the feet of the state (and by proxy voters) for poisoning the soil immediately adjacent to roads (and to a slightly lesser degree, the watersheds) with various salts.

o_1• 4 years ago

Farming bugs is next. Bug monoculture is up at bat, nothing can go wrong there.

_5uxp• 4 years ago

Insects are disgusting if we and nature could live without them, that would be amazing.

theGnuMe• 4 years ago

We’ve had a couple polar vortexes that sat over us for a few days. Those temps tend to kill off a large number of bugs. Then it’s been drier than normal and I mowed back the long grasses that abut the property all of which reduced the bugs.

tejohnso• 4 years ago

Maybe because we're in the midst of an anthropogenic mass extinction?

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1704949114

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

"The contemporary rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate"

"the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth."

"There is widespread consensus among scientists that human activity is accelerating the extinction of many animal species through the destruction of habitats, the consumption of animals as resources, and the elimination of species that humans view as threats or competitors."

Zigurd2• 4 years ago

This should be obvious. There is some good news in that the human population is plateauing, and is projected to gradually decline, as a result of urbanization, educated women, mass entertainment, secularism, and other influences.

If we want a natural world around us, we have to leave a lot of it natural. Sometimes it reminds us that's not really an option, but a requirement for survival. One thing we will learn from space colonies is that humans cannot thrive in a monoculture surrounded by sterility.

pharke• 4 years ago

Genuinely curious but how is this

"the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth."

an accurate statement when there have been a few mass extinction events that were (apparently) caused by sudden changes?

Is this assuming that the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event was caused by gradual changes instead of an impact or volcanic event? Same for the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction? I think there are also a number of extinction pulses in the record that could be attributed to sudden events although I'm unsure of how they compare in terms of the number of species affected.

nobodyandproud2• 4 years ago

Aside from pesticides and land development, yet another cause of decline is our over obsession with landscaping and municipal lights (at least here in the Northeast US).

I have mixed feelings about this: Night lights do add a bit of security, but insects such as moths rely on natural darkness and moonlight to navigate.

gs17• 4 years ago

Night lights do add a bit of security, but insects such as moths rely on natural darkness and moonlight to navigate.

We can have a bit of compromise, at least if we had dark sky compliant lights there would be a lot less of an issue. Where I live the streetlights seem to intentionally point upward and it's frustrating that this isn't a priority even when refiting them with LEDs (at least here they put in warm lights instead of cool ones like where I used to live).

axiolite• 4 years ago

another cause of decline is our over obsession with landscaping and municipal lights

Very much unlike their incandescent and florescent predecessors, LED lights emit practically no ultraviolet wavelengths, and therefore have a drastically reduced attractive effect on insects. Whatever effect outdoor lighting may have on insects, should be showing precipitous declines over the past several years, as LEDs have become the dominant artificial light source.

nobodyandproud2• 4 years ago

Insects are most attracted to UV, but they’re attracted to most of the visible (to human) spectrum.

Just less so, which is why the recommendation is to use “warm” led to minimize insect attraction.

Also, light usage hasn’t remained constant. LED’s lower power usage means that it enables more lighting, including solar powered (day charged) landscaping lights.

So whereas owners would formerly only have one or two lights at low watts before, the reduced energy usage means that they sprinkle in another magnitude more with LED.

dncornholio• 4 years ago

So we've been killing bugs with our windshields for decades and we wonder where they are? I'll rest my case!

Jokes aside, I don't think we take into account how many bugs we've killed with windshields, are we?

bamboozled3• 4 years ago

I thought the same for a long time, surely it has an effect ?

fallingfrog2• 4 years ago

Does anyone else remember the puddles in the road being full of worms after a good rainfall? I hardly see any of those anymore either.

eden_hazard• 4 years ago

I remember that. I used to walk to school and would jump be looking down the entire time to avoid stepping on worms. Now I hardly see them.

fallingfrog2• 4 years ago

This is concerning because if it's affecting worms too, then it's not just airborne bugs landing on crops with insecticide. It means it's already soaked into the soil.

andrew_• 4 years ago

I can attest that there has been zero slowdown in the prehistoric bug death on my windshield in Florida after any stretch of time on I-75.

If you've never lived through the lovebug season here, consider yourself lucky

mensetmanusman• 4 years ago

Although indoor vertical farming is going to be super expensive, it does have the possibility of huge benefits such as reducing contamination to the environment.

BuyMyBitcoins• 4 years ago

I like the idea of using genetic engineering to knock out certain species of pest, limited to the ones specialized to eat domesticated crops. You wouldn’t need to spray a cornfield if the corn moth was no longer around.

And, we could always keep a pristine population of the peat locked away in some vault if it turns out making them extinct in the wild was a bad idea.

theandrewbailey• 4 years ago

I was thinking about this lack of bugs phenomenon when driving to my mom's house a few times over the past 3 or so months. It hasn't been the case for me this year. My car is covered with dead bugs, more than there used to be ~10 years ago. While I was there, I walked around at night (in a small midwestern town), and was constantly assaulted by bugs. Is pesticide use down with fertilizer use?

christophilus• 4 years ago

I have a similar anecdote. I had to make a 5 hour drive this weekend up to Raleigh, NC, and for the first time in years, my windshield was dotted with bugs.

luxuryballs2• 4 years ago

why not just natural selection? the bugs that got splatted never got to lay eggs

jshprentz• 4 years ago

Mark Hostetler's analysis of North American windshield splatters in 1997 is documented in his book, "That Gunk on Your Car: A Unique Guide to Insects of North America." He reports on two dozen types of insects, with photos of them splattered and intact. His work won the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for entomology [1].

No time to read a whole book? Hostetler's son, Bryce, released a free iPhone/iPad app in 2018 [2].

[1] https://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig1997

[2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/that-gunk-on-your-car/id135275...

jrd79• 4 years ago

Regarding all the anecdotes, I would have said the same thing 8 years ago when I moved to my current house in suburban Minneapolis. Then we had some landscaping done and added a bunch of planting beds to the otherwise boring grass-only yard. And my kids threw some milkweed seeds on a slope that is too steep to mow. Now we've got tons of bumblebees, honey bees, monarch butterflies, and other insects. I think the range of most insects is quite small, so maybe people who miss the bugs just need to plant a bit more in their yards :).

Second point: the windshield splats proxy is too confounded to be useful. Use actual measurements or reasonable people will discount the claims (as I have done).

JustSomeNobody• 4 years ago

Not just windshields, but the fronts of cars also. I doubt very much that aerodynamics accounts for much of it.

didgetmaster• 4 years ago

My car was covered with bugs after a recent trip, but hard to say if that anecdata is any indication of actual insect population stability. If insect populations are truly in decline, it is hard to see how insecticides used on crops could be responsible for massive worldwide reductions.

Here is an interesting breakdown of how much of the world's surface (particularly the part that includes habitable land) is used to grow crops: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use (TLDR: it is a very small percentage)

phendrenad24• 4 years ago

Well the actual "study" borders on anecdata so your anecdote is helpful information.

jaimex2• 4 years ago

There is something to the aerodynamics of cars today, though unlikely the main driver.

When I've towed a caravan it picks up a lot of bugs while the windscreen is relatively clean the entire trip. I drive a 7 year old vehicle.

hiidrew• 4 years ago

This is terrible and makes me think of the unknown consequences that may occur from the death of an insect species, who knows.

Side note: recently moved to the northeast and it has been fascinating seeing the city collectively come together to kill an invasive bug species. You will witness an adult randomly stomping on the corner of the street. I wish we had the same energy when it came to protecting existing bugs.

quantumfissure• 4 years ago

Let me guess, the Spotted Lanternfly? They are all over here (SE PA).

It was entertaining watching the old man (easily 85+) from my neighborhood walking around with a broom brushing them off trees and smashing them with his walker.

snwt2• 4 years ago

Neonicotinoids (pesticide coated seeds) started becoming popular around the same time that bees started mass dying (early 2000s).

AFAIK, the effect of these pesticides on humans is limited, but it's been absolutely devastating for insects.

There is not much profit to be made on insects (aside from bees), so research and bills are getting lobbied into limbo by the big four neonicotinoid companies and agriculture organizations.

snwt2• 4 years ago

Here's a documentary the subject: "Bayer and the Bees" https://youtu.be/UaNSByf4sLA

bmitc14• 4 years ago

That’s capitalism in a nutshell: if it doesn’t make money it’s not useful.

Baader-Meinhof• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/20221021230011/https://www.washingtonpost...

jollyllama• 4 years ago

Did anybody else notice that the windshield bugs made a comeback during the pandemic?

wazoox2• 4 years ago

This article is pretty characteristic of the chemical industry influence trying to muddle the waters.

I've watched recently a conference[1] by several renowned scientists. They affirm that neonicotinoids / neonics are responsible of at least 80% of the decline.

They also affirm that the "merchants of doubt" are working their best to muddle the evidence with things like "there are multiple factors", "it's complicated", "we need more research" etc.

But just like the overwhelming majority of lung cancer comes from smoking, the overwhelming factor in insects decline (and its consequences like birds decline) is PESTICIDES and neonicotinoids in particular.

[1]: sorry, in French : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FQT7b2ExP4 Another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLQKs1KBw9Y

Why are there so few dead bugs on windshields these days?

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