Compared to 10 years ago, the number of insect species in many areas of Germany has now decreased by around a third. To say this is the result of a study conducted by an international research group.
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Compared to 10 years ago, the number of insect species in many areas of Germany has now decreased by around a third. To say this is the result of a study conducted by an international research group.
The team, led by scientists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) but born from the collaboration with the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL (Switzerland), the University of Bern, the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena and other German research centers , focused on the current insect situation.
The study looked at a large number of different insect species in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Baden-Württemberg (Germany) between 2008 and 2017. The researchers collected over 1 million insects from 300 different locations showing that most of the nearly 2700 species examined are currently in decline. A phenomenon that unfortunately does not concern only Germany but the whole world.
The loss of insect species was assessed in particular in grasslands and in the vicinity of intensely cultivated land, but the results obtained also apply to forests and protected areas.
In recent years, some rare species have no longer been found and, both in the grasslands and in the wooded areas, Scientists counted around a third fewer insect species than 10 years ago.
As Wolfgang Weisser, professor of terrestrial ecology at TUM and one of the lead authors of the study, stated:
“A decline on that scale and over a period of just 10 years was a complete surprise to us: it's scary, but it fits the picture presented in an increasing number of studies "
But what is causing this terrible loss to our ecosystem? Terrestrial ecologist Sebastian Seibold on this aspect stated:
“We cannot ascertain whether the observed decline is determined by the effects inherited from the historical intensification of land use or from the recent agricultural intensification at the landscape level”.
Either one or the other, therefore, the responsibility is also in this case of intensive agriculture and the use of pesticides and herbicides, as indeed other studies on the decline of insects had already discovered. A decline that is not limited only to the areas near the cultivated fields but which even extends to the protected areas.
However, this new study, published in Nature, has more highlighted how the disappearance of insects has reached far more serious levels than those hypothesized so far and that, as always, the responsibility lies with man.
What to do? The authors of the study are convinced that it is necessary to act promptly on a regional and national scale to save insects which, also due to climate change, could really disappear in a few decades with serious damage to the ecosystem and the food chain.
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