I always wondered how much damage insecticides do to the overall insect population. I used to wonder how they were able to just kill crop-damaging bugs. Later I learned that most bugs, no matter their ability to damage, were killed by it and it has a far-reaching effect on parts outside where it is used. Now they have to deal with climate change, mono-crops, land loss, and insecticides. No wonder they are in trouble.
I'm sure it looks great and is all very clever, but I take issue with websites that can't display images without a bunch of JS enabled. Playing games with scrolling isn't great either.
I know most people will probably disagree with me, and only care about whatever looks flashy, but if we're handing out awards I hope it's for websites that prioritize accessibility and graceful degradation. Being able to do the fanciest things when browsers allow for it, but still ensuring that you can deliver the information when they don't is a dying art.
I understand why people like bug zappers. The are no alternatives that provide instant visual and audio feedback that they're working. Poison repellents smell bad and aren't good for humans or animals, ultrasonic devices are basically scams, and traps are hit/miss and need maintaining/cleaning/replacement. Zappers have a ton of problems too (like aerosol sprays of fly guts) and I wouldn't recommend them, but I get why they are popular with the masses.
They are a massive fire hazard though. If I were in an area with a ton of malaria it might still be worth it, but those nets are typically soaked in poison and I wouldn't expect everybody to feel that way (https://observer.ug/news/headlines/62350-mosquito-nets-fuell...)
Not so far? Maybe once people start using them in large numbers or buying cheap knockoffs of mass produced laser zappers on amazon we'll see a bunch of fire deaths or other injuries (lasers in the eyeball?), but in theory they would be safer.
> Mosquito nets work and are cheap and environmentally neutral.
Yes, as evidenced by their usage to eradicate malaria... :-/
Many countries also use nets with insecticides, not "just" nets, so they're not even environmentally neutral. This is because mosquito is and remains key to malaria control. You can't live your life inside a net.
Currently, the countries where malaria is a big problem are poor and suffer from lack of education, literacy etc.
But on the one hand, global warming is pushing the Anopheles mosquito range into richer educated countries. That might result in greater and better use of nets.
On the other hand, the tropical countries' demography is changing and education and so on is improving, overall, so that might help, too.
On the gripping hand, global warming and ecological collapse is driven by the size of the human population and so more infectious disease and more plagues would be good for the planet and therefore good for humanity in general.
(Just not the people who die from it, obvs.)
So it all balances out.
But appropriate technology is more important than the sort of fancy elaborate tech that HN commenters favour, like AIs with frikkin' lasers.
A beautifully illustrative article showcasing a very harrowing fact of our impact upon ecosystems. It's really scary how little humans are aware of our impact. No one is working on this stuff either, I suppose because there's apparently no money in it. Is that true? Let's say you had a company that improved local ecosystems (through the variety of ways that that could be done). How does that company get revenue?
Nature preserves are not untouched by civilization. CO2 levels could have direct effects (we are nearly at ambient levels shown to have cognitive effects on humans), and there are microplastics now found everywhere on earth, throughout the air and water.
Yes, by untouched I mean people aren't living there. So you can't blame build out and direct pollution. But yes those places haven't escaped pollution like CO2 and microplastics. Extreme heat is now happening for longer periods. That kill the bugs. My bet is global warming is the primary culprit.
Like others have said, nature preserves are far from untouched. I am pretty sure that small quantities of insecticides and pollutants reach even those places.
I live in an European city, where the decline of the insect population is extremely visible.
The most salient is not the reduction in their number, but the reduction in their diversity.
There are a few species that are still somewhat abundant, mainly some true bugs (Hemiptera) and even mosquitoes can still be seen from time to time.
Nevertheless, in the same place a few decades ago hundreds of species were abundant, butterflies, beetles, dragonflies, damselflies, grasshoppers, crickets, lacewings (Neuroptera), wild bees, wasps and many others that I have no longer seen for more than a decade. Also the centipedes, the pill bugs, the snails and the earthworms have disappeared.
The vegetation that attracted all those insects is still around, so I assume that they have disappeared because of insecticides and that the few remaining, i.e. the true bugs (Hemiptera), might be more resistant to them.
Yes. I am in my mid thirties, and live in Texas. In my youth I used to see fireflies, damselflies, bright red and black flightless wasps colloquially called ‘cow killers.’ All vanishingly rare now- I think I saw a single lonely firefly this year. There used to be so many in my neighborhood.
It's funny, with more forests, fewer farms, less pesticide use you'd think the insect population in the US would increase. Certainly the wild mammal populations are coming back strong. But it's going down globally. I would assume most countries are experiencing the opposite, fewer forests and more farms/pesticides. Still the population is decreasing.
Excerpt:
"Exposure of adult flies to mobile-phone radiation for 30 min has an immediate impact on ROS production in animal's ovary, which seems to cause a global, systemic and non-targeted transcriptional reprogramming of gene expression, 2 h post-exposure, being finally followed by induction of apoptosis 4 h after the end of exposure. Conclusively, this unique type of pulsed radiation, mainly being derived from daily used mobile phones, seems capable of mobilizing critical cytopathic mechanisms, and altering fundamental genetic programs and networks in D. melanogaster."
Excerpt:
"Insects are especially sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. An increasing number of reports indicate that flies and spiders, among other invertebrates, disappear from areas that receive the highest levels of radiation from mobile telephone antennas, and these observations are consistent with numerous laboratory studies showing the negative effects of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) on reproductive success, development and navigation"
I'm curious to know if 24/7 electromagnetic radiation has an effect on people. I'm sure most of the population falls asleep with their cell phones next to them every night on top of keeping them in our pockets all day.
From the evidence on wireless radiation effects on humans, the same mechanism of biological damage seems to be at play: oxidative-stress. Especially human male sperm cells are affected, being more vulnerable as lacking DNA repair capabilities as other cell types (sperm is a simple transport cell, not evolved for longevity).
A number of scientific review papers have identified oxidative-stress from pulse-modulated (information-carrying) radio-frequency radiation as a driver of free-radical formation (ROS), inflammation, cell stress and DNA-damage.
Excerpt:
"...among 100 currently available peer-reviewed studies dealing with oxidative effects of low-intensity RFR, in general, 93 confirmed that RFR induces oxidative effects in biological systems. A wide pathogenic potential of the induced ROS and their involvement in cell signaling pathways explains a range of biological/health effects of low-intensity RFR, which include both cancer and non-cancer pathologies."
Excerpt:
"Thus, a complete picture is provided of how human-made EMF exposure may indeed lead to DNA damage and related pathologies, including cancer. Moreover, it is suggested that the non-thermal biological effects attributed to RF EMFs are actually due to their ELF components."
Pretty graphics but .. how do they write such a long piece without mentioning elevated Carbon Dioxide? eC02. Certainly broad-spectrum, insecticides have a role in decline but there's also the background of eCO2 which gets no coverage here, just warming effects.
From an insect's pov eCO2 changes everything; how nutritions leaves are - also how unpalatable they are², increases in water acidity, changes to their habitat from increased rainfall, and leads to changes in insect physiology³
Jactel et al have an outline Responses of forest insect pests to climate change: not so simple https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221457451... but this is still an area of many unknowns, even less known than the effect of eCO2 on plants - which is deleteriuous across the board.
2 -Johnson et al 2023 eCO2 suppresses silicon accumulation and exacerbates endophyte reductions in plant phosphorus. Article is on eCO2-driven interlinked changes in pasture grasses and how productivity and insects respond to this.
27 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 74.1 ms ] threadI know most people will probably disagree with me, and only care about whatever looks flashy, but if we're handing out awards I hope it's for websites that prioritize accessibility and graceful degradation. Being able to do the fanciest things when browsers allow for it, but still ensuring that you can deliver the information when they don't is a dying art.
What we need are affordable laser zappers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser) with an option for an audio alert on each kill.
Mosquito nets work and are cheap and environmentally neutral.
Yes, as evidenced by their usage to eradicate malaria... :-/
Many countries also use nets with insecticides, not "just" nets, so they're not even environmentally neutral. This is because mosquito is and remains key to malaria control. You can't live your life inside a net.
Currently, the countries where malaria is a big problem are poor and suffer from lack of education, literacy etc.
But on the one hand, global warming is pushing the Anopheles mosquito range into richer educated countries. That might result in greater and better use of nets.
On the other hand, the tropical countries' demography is changing and education and so on is improving, overall, so that might help, too.
On the gripping hand, global warming and ecological collapse is driven by the size of the human population and so more infectious disease and more plagues would be good for the planet and therefore good for humanity in general.
(Just not the people who die from it, obvs.)
So it all balances out.
But appropriate technology is more important than the sort of fancy elaborate tech that HN commenters favour, like AIs with frikkin' lasers.
Plastics are everywhere also
I live in an European city, where the decline of the insect population is extremely visible.
The most salient is not the reduction in their number, but the reduction in their diversity.
There are a few species that are still somewhat abundant, mainly some true bugs (Hemiptera) and even mosquitoes can still be seen from time to time.
Nevertheless, in the same place a few decades ago hundreds of species were abundant, butterflies, beetles, dragonflies, damselflies, grasshoppers, crickets, lacewings (Neuroptera), wild bees, wasps and many others that I have no longer seen for more than a decade. Also the centipedes, the pill bugs, the snails and the earthworms have disappeared.
The vegetation that attracted all those insects is still around, so I assume that they have disappeared because of insecticides and that the few remaining, i.e. the true bugs (Hemiptera), might be more resistant to them.
Its shown in robust studies that even low-level RF causes oxidative-stress and cell death in insect ovaries. For example, see: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19336934.2016.1...
Excerpt: "Exposure of adult flies to mobile-phone radiation for 30 min has an immediate impact on ROS production in animal's ovary, which seems to cause a global, systemic and non-targeted transcriptional reprogramming of gene expression, 2 h post-exposure, being finally followed by induction of apoptosis 4 h after the end of exposure. Conclusively, this unique type of pulsed radiation, mainly being derived from daily used mobile phones, seems capable of mobilizing critical cytopathic mechanisms, and altering fundamental genetic programs and networks in D. melanogaster."
Also, this recent review paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...
Excerpt: "Insects are especially sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. An increasing number of reports indicate that flies and spiders, among other invertebrates, disappear from areas that receive the highest levels of radiation from mobile telephone antennas, and these observations are consistent with numerous laboratory studies showing the negative effects of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) on reproductive success, development and navigation"
For example, see: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26151230/
Excerpt: "...among 100 currently available peer-reviewed studies dealing with oxidative effects of low-intensity RFR, in general, 93 confirmed that RFR induces oxidative effects in biological systems. A wide pathogenic potential of the induced ROS and their involvement in cell signaling pathways explains a range of biological/health effects of low-intensity RFR, which include both cancer and non-cancer pathologies."
and: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8562392/
Excerpt: "Thus, a complete picture is provided of how human-made EMF exposure may indeed lead to DNA damage and related pathologies, including cancer. Moreover, it is suggested that the non-thermal biological effects attributed to RF EMFs are actually due to their ELF components."
From an insect's pov eCO2 changes everything; how nutritions leaves are - also how unpalatable they are², increases in water acidity, changes to their habitat from increased rainfall, and leads to changes in insect physiology³
Jactel et al have an outline Responses of forest insect pests to climate change: not so simple https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221457451... but this is still an area of many unknowns, even less known than the effect of eCO2 on plants - which is deleteriuous across the board.
2 -Johnson et al 2023 eCO2 suppresses silicon accumulation and exacerbates endophyte reductions in plant phosphorus. Article is on eCO2-driven interlinked changes in pasture grasses and how productivity and insects respond to this.
3 - Liu et al 2023 Elevated CO2 leads to thick-skinned thrips by altering trehalose and chitin metabolisms. This would have serious implications for pest control. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10340-023-01697-3