Insects and lights – now there’s a combination that we have you ducking for cover or scratching as they invade your garden. However, National Geographic reports, insects numbers are crashing – and life on earth would not be the same….
“It’s said that we live in the Anthropocene—an epoch defined by human impacts on the planet. Still, by many measures, it’s bugs that dominate the world. At any given moment, it’s been estimated, there are 10 quintillion insects flying, crawling, hovering, marching, burrowing, and swimming around. In terms of variety, the numbers are equally impressive: Something like 80 percent of all the different kinds of animals are insects. They maintain the world as we know it: Without insects to pollinate them, most flowering plants, from daisies to dogwoods, would die out.
If humans were to suddenly disappear, biologist Edward O. Wilson has famously observed, the Earth would “regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago.” But “if insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”
It is, therefore, shocking—and alarming—that in most places scientists have looked recently, they’ve found that insect numbers are falling. This is the case in agricultural areas and in wild places like Castle Peak. Quite probably, it’s also happening in your own backyard.
Above images from the great resource that is National Geographic
In the United Kingdom, two key groups that are working hard for insects are Buglife ….
National Insect Week in the UK is June 22nd – 28th
