Original title: Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts
People are changing land and climate, while many kinds of wildlife are declining. Reports show losses in insects, including fewer individuals, less total insect mass, and fewer species in some places. But the authors say we still do not know whether insects are declining as fast as, or faster than, other groups. The abstract introduces this question but does not give the paper’s answer.
Imagine checking how much food is left in several kitchen cupboards over time. Some cupboards clearly have less than before, but the checks were not all done in the same way. In this paper, the cupboards stand for groups of wildlife, and the missing food stands for declines; the key difficulty is that the available evidence does not yet show whether insects are losing ground faster than other groups.
Insects are part of a wider biodiversity crisis, alongside falling numbers of birds, amphibians, and other animals. Knowing how insect declines compare with those losses matters for judging how severe the crisis is, but the abstract says that comparison remains unresolved.
The abstract excerpt does not provide the paper’s methods, evidence, or conclusions. It says that whether insect declines match or exceed declines in other groups remains unknown, so it does not establish a comparative rate or explain causes.
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Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts — David L. Wagner, Eliza M. Grames, Matthew L. Forister et al. — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — doi:10.1073/pnas.2023989118
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.