#your local pollinator ecologist speaks

[asgardian--angels]

Hi, I’m also a NH resident - what can you tell me about the native bees that are here?

I know it’s a pretty general question, but I’ll take all the info dumping you’re willing to do

Thanks!

Readers, this is a long post, so feel free to press J and skip it if it's not for you. But if you live in the northeast it may be of interest!

Hiya fellow New Hampshirite! I could talk oodles about our native bees, especially since I did field research on them in undergrad and continue to work with native bees in the northeast, first for my MS and now in my job (upstate New York currently). The things I say here are broadly applicable to all of New England, as 1) this region is relatively homogenous in its bee fauna (melittofauna) given that it's temperate and has similar habitats (particularly in its high cover of hardwood forests and few grasslands), and 2) New Hampshire is poorly studied in terms of its bee diversity relative to other New England states, which I'll get to.

A bit of bee background

As you may or may not know, wild bees are nothing like honeybees. The vast majority of bees are solitary, not social, so they live singly in nests - either underground tunnels, or excavations in stems or wood, occasionally human structures - and in our area are generally univoltine, meaning they have one generation per year (this changes as you move further south in the US, sometimes even the same species switches to multivoltinism given a longer growing season). Solitary bees include everything from mining bees (Andrena), leafcutter bees (Megachile), mason bees (Osmia), cellophane bees (Colletes), longhorned bees (Melissodes), masked bees (Hylaeus), and many others. Our social bees - which comprises a wide spectrum from weakly social to primitively eusocial behavior (honeybees are 'advanced' eusocial) - include groups like carpenter bees (Xylocopa virginica, Ceratina), bumble bees (Bombus), and many metallic sweat bees (e.g., Lasioglossum). Many others are kleptoparasites, or brood parasites - a higher diversity than social bees actually. These do not collect pollen or build nests, rather they target a specific host bee species and lay their eggs in the host nest, where their larva eats all the pollen provisions meant for the host. These 'cuckoo bees' as they're called include nomad bees (Nomada), cuckoo sweat bees (Sphecodes, sometimes called blood bees though this is a misnomer as there are actual blood-feeding bees in the tropics), cuckoo leafcutter bees (Coelioxys), longhorn cuckoo bees (Triepeolus, Epeolus), and several others that are much less common.

Eight-toothed cuckoo leafcutter bee, Coelioxys octodentatus. It targets the nests of several species of leafcutter bee.

Bees collect pollen for their offspring. Most are generalists, visiting and collecting pollen from many families of flowering plants. But in our area, around 15% (this number is much higher in the southwest and other ephemeral/highly diverse habitats) of our bees are diet specialists, also known as oligolectic. They evolved to feed their young pollen from a specific group of plants, anything from one family (e.g., Asteraceae) to, commonly, one or a few related genera (e.g., Solidago) or rarely even one species (e.g., Macropis nuda on Lysimachia ciliata). In our area, these 'monoleges' are typically so because there's only one suitable representative of that plant group present in New England, but they may use more hosts further south (though, not always! We still have much to learn about the true specificity for these species, it's difficult to really know how specialized they are). True monoleges are more frequent in arid regions where there is a high proportion of endemic plants, and with it, endemic bees. Specialist bees often have adaptations to make them more efficient at collecting pollen from their hosts, and they tend to be more rare than generalists because they are only found with their host, which may have a patchy distribution, and are only out for a short period of time - as little as two weeks, when their host is flowering. A full list of known specialist bees in the eastern US and their hosts can be found here. Fowler (2016) is the peer-reviewed journal article version of this that is specifically for the northeast.

Bees in New Hampshire

New Hampshire probably has somewhere between 300-400 species of bees, based on estimates from surrounding states, the region as a whole (which is around 450), and museum records. I curate an ongoing project on iNaturalist to list all known bee species in the state, which you can see here. That has around 300 species (only 78 have actually been observed in NH on iNat), which is a hefty handful more than the few contemporary published surveys have found - entirely done by the Rehan Lab (now at York University), where I studied and worked for two years. Those surveys were centered in the southeastern portion of the state (Strafford Co, at and around UNH), the White Mountains, and in the Ossipee Pine Barrens. I helped with all of these surveys! They produced several new state records. The vast majority of historical bee collections by past naturalists were focused in the Durham area as well, making our idea of bees in the state very skewed and leaving vast swaths of the state, and many habitats, unexplored. This matters, because our state may seem a monolith of forest but it isn't!

Bee communities differ by geography, habitat, soils, and specific local plant composition. While New Hampshire doesn't quite have the diversity in ecoregions or plant species that some other states have (the southwest has around 800-1200 bee species per state), things do differ, and what we do have is special in its own right.

Geography: We sit at a boundary of north and south in terms of insect species, with northern New England representing the (current) northernmost range for some 'southern' species, and the southernmost range for 'northern' species in North America. In southern NH, you will likely find the same sort of bees that you'd find in Massachusetts, most of those also being found in New Jersey or even North Carolina, or as far west as the central states. That's how you end up with bees like Agapostemon texanus in New Hampshire! But in the north country, the composition of bees starts to change, with many more traditionally Canadian species becoming common. This is well-observed in bumble bees - around and north of the White Mountains, you really start to see more of the tricolored bumble bee (Bombus ternarius) and northern amber bumble bee (Bombus borealis, aptly named). The majority of our remaining population of the yellow-banded bumble bee (Bombus terricola), a regionally declining species, is in the White Mountains.

Yellow-banded bumble bee, Bombus terricola. One of several bumble bees in North America to decline severely in the last 30 years due to pathogens spread from commercially reared bumble bees along with habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change.

Habitat & Soils: While many bees are habitat generalists, many others are associated with specific habitats due to pollen preferences or nesting substrate preferences. We have plenty of forest bees, which may have been the predominant bees prior to historic land clearing - a good proportion of our specialists only visit spring-blooming flowers on the forest floor, like Andrena erigeniae (spring beauty miner) on Claytonia (spring beauty), or Andrena distans (cranesbill miner) on Geranium maculatum (wild geranium). Others like woody forest plants common to our area, like the rare Andrena kalmiae which visits sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia). Many bees even visit wind-pollinated trees and spend time in the forest canopy! Several species of bumble bees also rely on forest or forest edge habitat for nesting, and forest wildflowers are important resources for newly emerged queens. We also have a handful of solitary bees that nest in logs, thus depending on forest, like Augochlora pura and Lasioglossum coeruleum.

Other bees are specialized, or at least prefer, habitats like wetlands (which we still have many of, because our rate of historic wetland destruction is one of the lowest in the country), fields (which we never had many of, and these species are likely more common now, though they probably peaked in the farming era pre 1850s), alpine/montane habitat (found in either the Whites and/or the Mt. Monadnock area), coastal dunes (which we've mostly destroyed), heath (which New England has lost a lot of), and others. Most of these species are poorly documented in New Hampshire, because - in all places - bee surveys skew towards open habitat like meadows. There's likely a lot of hidden diversity locked away in these habitats, including many of the region's rare bees. A 2014 study (Wagner et al.) of power line rights-of-way found not only nearly half of the region's bee fauna along this one multi-state stretch of transmission line, but in NH, documented what is often considered North America's rarest bee - Epeoloides pilosulus. Not too shabby for humble New Hampshire! Power line ROWs are some of NH's only maintained early successional, and particularly native shrubland, habitat, making it immensely important for our bees as well as many wildlife.

Above: Dufourea novaeangliae, a pickerelweed specialist bee only found in freshwater emergent marshes. Very poorly documented in New Hampshire but easily recognizable and probably all over the place.

Soil also affects what bees live where. Much of northern New England has a highly sandy soil type, which differs vastly from nearby New York and even Vermont (thanks, granite!). Because of this, our plant communities are noticeably different from these states - plants that thrive here are those that do well in harsh conditions, i.e. our poor, sandy, acidic soils. This means oaks and pines, winterberry holly, and a lot of ericaceous plants, aka blueberries, laurels, rhododendrons, partridgeberry, huckleberry, maleberry, leatherleaf, and many others. The understory composition of those forest floor plants is also quite different as well, favoring things like starflower, goldthread, wintergreen, and fringed polygala rather than the squirrel corn, hepatica, and foamflower that need richer, moister soils. Thus, we may not have all of the specialists that need those rich forest flowers, but we have many specialists on those ericaceous plants - and there's a LOT - that are rare in those other states. You probably know just how common lowbush blueberry is in New Hampshire. There's nearly a dozen specialists on blueberry. Sand in general also produces unique bee communities, as many bees (and wasps) are specialized to nest only in sand, thus those are likely more prevalent here than elsewhere.

Colletes validus, the blueberry cellophane bee. Nearly absent in New York but likely quite widespread in NH - there's a nice nesting aggregation near my house where I took this photo. As the name implies, they primarily collect pollen from blueberry.

Lasioglossum vierecki, a sandplain specialist. Highly abundant in this specific habitat, but entirely absent anywhere else.

Documenting New Hampshire's Bees

Sadly, New Hampshire is lagging far behind other northeastern states in documenting our bee fauna. As I mentioned, our existing surveys have only covered a small portion of the state and there have been no statewide standardized survey efforts. New York and Vermont have recently completed gigantic, statewide atlases of their bee diversity (linked), and Massachusetts has so much going on I couldn't possibly link it all here, including many grassroots initiatives by towns to go pollinator-friendly, from large-scale habitat restoration to pesticide-free pledges (I recommend signing up for the Mass Pollinator Network newsletter). I do work on Martha's Vineyard, where they're conducting the Martha's Vineyard Atlas of Life, including bee surveys (a great paper by Goldstein and Ascher 2016 details a comprehensive bee survey of the Vineyard, showing all the cool rare bees they have! Such is the way with islands). Not to mention the hub of bee research for this region is in Ontario, at York University. That place has been surveyed to death in comparison to us.

Thanks to the efforts in these neighboring places, we have a pretty good idea of what bees should occur here. But much work needs to be done to actually find them and update decades-old records of species that haven't been formally documented in a very long time. Getting a handle on our bees is very important, across the country and the world, because long-term monitoring is the only way we can track declines. There are a handful of bees that may be extirpated from New Hampshire due to changes in land use, diseases, and pesticides. A big example is the rusty-patched bumblebee (Bombus affinis), which used to occur in NH, but was last seen in the early 90s and is presumed extirpated. Another is that yellow-banded bumblebee, which used to be found throughout the state, but due likely to climate change among other factors, it has receded into the mountains where it is colder and it has less competition from other bumble bee species. It may disappear from the state entirely within the century (this altitudinal range shift has been found in many bumble bees across the world due to climate change). Other bees are becoming more common, like the common eastern bumble bee, while others still are moving north into NH, or have been introduced from Eurasia (like wool-carder bees or rapidly spreading giant resin bee, Megachile sculpturalis).

Giant resin bee, Megachile sculpturalis, introduced to eastern North America in the 1990s. It can outcompete and displace native wood-boring bees like carpenter bees.

So what work is being done in New Hampshire currently to document and protect our bees?

UNH used to be the hub of bee research in the state, due to the Rehan Bee Lab, but even though that lab has moved to Canada, a lot of work still goes on through the Cooperative Extension, including on their research farms where optimal pollinator habitat restoration techniques are being studied. There is some information on their website, such as resources for planting meadows and native plants for NH gardens, though admittedly not all of it is easy to find, and much of the research that's been done in the past few years doesn't appear to be on there at all (unless it's somewhere I'm not seeing).

Lately, much of the attention for pollinator conservation in NH has been directed at our local NH Audubon chapters. In particular, the McLane Audubon Center (Concord) has been undertaking a massive effort to install a native pollinator meadow from seed in the past couple of years, experimenting with different site prep methods. They have been hosting an extensive webinar series which are all available to watch for free, many of which are about our native pollinators.

Apart from this, it's mainly been up to individual nature centers and preserves to create resources and install pollinator habitat, which many have done! But we lack a centralized effort at the state level. There are unfortunately still very few native plant nurseries in NH, and there is no organizational effort to help the public find them. I've been trying over the years to compile a list but many of them are wholesale only. A few dedicated retail nurseries are Bagley Pond Perennials in Warner, Foundwell Farm in Pembroke, and NH Native Perennials in Madison. Wholesale nurseries (meaning you can request them at your regular garden center) are Van Berkum Nursery and American Native Beauties. Otherwise, local nurseries may sell a varying selection of native plants if you hunt for them. You're likely better off finding nurseries in Massachusetts if you live in the southern half of the state - there's many more, or ordering seeds and plants online from the Wild Seed Project, based in Maine, Prairie Moon Nursery, or Ernst Seed. See more at the end of the post.

So how else can we work on documenting our native bees? Until we do a statewide atlas, it comes down largely to citizen science observations. New Hampshire residents are strongly encouraged to record bee sightings to websites like iNaturalist, Bumble Bee Watch, Beecology, and BugGuide. I'm a reviewer on three out of four of these sites so if you post in New England I'll likely see it. While a lot of our native bees cannot be identified from photos, even good ones, plenty can, including some rare and specialized species, making it valuable to go out and look for them in likely habitat, or even just to document what's in your yard.

You can encourage more species of bees to your yard by planting native wildflowers, shrubs, and trees. Keystone species in our area include goldenrods, milkweeds, black cherry trees, willows (not weeping willow), red maple, blueberries, asters, brambles (e.g., black raspberries), shrubby dogwoods, Joe-Pye weeds, sumac trees, wild strawberry, serviceberry, and many others. To support butterflies and moths, and by extension birds, the best thing you can plant is an oak tree, as they support over 500 species of caterpillar in our region. It's also great to plant native grasses, like little bluestem, purple lovegrass, poverty oatgrass, and panic grass, that thrive on our poor soils, instead of large turfgrass lawns that do not do well in these conditions. New Hampshire lawns rarely look healthy! A native lawn of wild groundcovers, forest plants, moss, ferns, sedges, or the above grasses would do much better.

A wet meadow in south-central New Hampshire, featuring Joe-Pye weed, goldenrods, and asters.

Further Resources

In addition to the links throughout this post, there are many more resources to learn about pollinators and native plants in our region.

Online:

Grow Native Mass - a wealth of resources

Wild Seed Project - another wealth of resources

Vermont Wild Bee Survey - user-friendly guide of Vermont's bees

Cornell Danforth Lab; Creating a Garden for Specialist Bees - comprehensive guide for supporting our region's often rare and imperiled specialists

UMass Dartmouth Gegear Lab - resources on supporting locally imperiled bees

Xerces Society - ample resources on establishing pollinator habitat in their Resource Center and Publications Library

GoBotany - user-friendly key for identifying New England plants

Landscape Interactions - behind some of the region's largest and most comprehensive pollinator corridor planting plans, mostly in Massachusetts. Download their master plan documents for free and see how municipalities are implementing these designs.

Heather Holm's website - lots of plant lists and info sheets for native bees, wasps, and plants (some are outside the northeast)

Pollinator Pathway - a ton of broadly applicable information

Bees of New York - great profiles on many northeastern bees

Homegrown National Park - put your native yard on the map and learn more about plants to support the most species

Print:

Bringing Nature Home, by Doug Tallamy (and any of his other books)

Pollinators of Native Plants and Bees: An Identification and Native Plant Forage Guide, by Heather Holm (and any of her other books)

The Northeast Native Plant Primer, by the Native Plant Trust

Deer-Resistant Native Plants for the Northeast, by Ruth Clausen and Gregory Tepper

... plus many others that I cannot all name here. Check your local Audubon gift shop, Barnes and Noble, Toadstool Bookshop, or nature center to find these regionally specific books. One last great book is The Nature of New Hampshire, by Dan Sperduto and Ben Kimball, which covers every natural community in the state. A must-have for lovers of our good old granite state.

I hope this sated your curiosity! And I hope this can be of use to many of you who live in northern New England. As always, feel free to drop me a line anytime on here if you have questions or want to chat about our native pollinators. All photos in this post are my own. Now go out and find some bees!

#tauriel-of-moondoor #bees #pollinators #new england #new hampshire #native bees #wildflowers #i may or may not have spent five hours writing this #but it's worth saying #sorry for posting at 4am but that's when i finished writing it lol #i will reblog again tomorrow #your local pollinator ecologist speaks

[sciencespies]

Meet the Ecologist Who Wants You to Unleash the Wild on Your Backyard

https://sciencespies.com/nature/meet-the-ecologist-who-wants-you-to-unleash-the-wild-on-your-backyard/

Meet the Ecologist Who Wants You to Unleash the Wild on Your Backyard

The land is ten gently sloping acres in rural southeastern Pennsylvania, at one time mowed for hay, with a handsome farmhouse that Douglas Tallamy bought around 20 years ago. It isn’t much to look at, by the standards most Americans apply to landscaping—no expansive views across swaths of lawn set off by flowerbeds and specimen trees—but, as Tallamy says, “We’re tucked away here where no one can see us, so we can do pretty much what we want.” And what he wants is for this property to be a model for the rest of the country, by which he means suburbs, exurbs, uninhabited woods, highway margins, city parks, streets and backyards, even rooftops and window boxes, basically every square foot of land not paved or farmed. He wants to see it replanted with native North American flora, supporting a healthy array of native North American butterflies, moths and other arthropods, providing food for a robust population of songbirds, small mammals and reptiles. He even has a name for it: Homegrown National Park.

A creek on his land supports native plants adapted to “getting their feet wet,” Tallamy says, such as skunk cabbage.

(Matthew Cicanese)

On a June day in 2001, not long after he bought the property, Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware, was walking his land when he noticed something that struck him as unusual. Before he bought it, most of it had been kept in hay, but at that point it hadn’t been mowed in three years and “was overgrown with autumn olive and Oriental bittersweet in a tangle so thick you couldn’t walk. The first thing I had to do was cut trails,” Tallamy recalls. And walking through his woods on the newly cut trails, what he noticed was what was missing: caterpillars.

No caterpillars on the Oriental bittersweet, the multiflora rose, the Japanese honeysuckle, on the burning bush that lined his neighbor’s driveway. All around him plants were in a riot of photosynthesis, converting the energy of sunlight into sugars and proteins and fats that were going uneaten. A loss, and not just for him as a professional entomologist. Insects—“the little things that run the world,” as the naturalist E.O. Wilson called them—are at the heart of the food web, the main way nature converts plant protoplasm into animal life. If Tallamy were a chickadee—a bird whose nestlings may consume between 6,000 and 9,000 caterpillars before they fledge, all foraged within a 150-foot radius of the nest—he would have found it hard going in these woods.

Tallamy knew, in a general sense, why that was. The plants he was walking among were mostly introduced exotics, brought to America either accidentally in cargo or intentionally for landscaping or crops. Then they escaped into the wild, outcompeting their native counterparts, meeting the definition of an “invasive” species. By and large, plants can tolerate a wide range of environmental conditions. But insects tend to be specialists, feeding on and pollinating a narrow spectrum of plant life, sometimes just a single species. “Ninety percent of the insects that eat plants can develop and reproduce only on the plants with which they share an evolutionary history,” Tallamy says. In the competition to eat, and to avoid being eaten, plants have developed various chemical and morphological defenses—toxins, sticky sap, rough bark, waxy cuticles—and insects have evolved ways to get around them. But as a rule, insect strategies don’t work well against species they have never encountered. That’s true of even closely related species—imported Norway maples versus native sugar maples, for instance. Tallamy has found that within the same genus, introduced plant species provide on average 68 percent less food for insects than natives. Hence, a plant that in its native habitat might support dozens or hundreds of species of insects, birds and mammals may go virtually uneaten in a new ecosystem. Pennsylvania, for example.

Demonstrating that point might make for a good undergraduate research project, Tallamy thought. So he asked a student to do a survey of the literature in preparation for a study. The student reported back there wasn’t any. “I checked myself,” he says. “There was a lot written about invasive species. But nothing on insects and the food web.”

That, he says, was the “aha” moment in his career, at which he began to remake himself from a specialist in the mating habits of the cucumber beetle to a proselytizer for native plants as a way to preserve what remains of the natural ecology of North America. He was following in the footsteps of Wilson, his scientific hero, who went from being the world’s foremost expert on ants to an eminent spokesman for the ecology of the whole planet. “I didn’t exactly plan it this way,” Tallamy says with a shrug. “In the musical chairs of life, the music stopped and I sat down in the ‘invasive plants’ chair. It’s a satisfying way to close out my career.”

As a scientist, Tallamy realized his initial obligation was to prove his insight empirically. He began with the essential first step of any scientific undertaking, by applying for research grants, the first of which took until 2005 to materialize. Then followed five years of work by relays of students. “We had to plant the plants and then measure insect use over the next three years, at five different sites,” he recalls. “To sample a plot was an all-day affair with five people.” Out of that work eventually came papers in scientific journals such as Conservation Biology (“Ranking lepidopteran use of native versus introduced plants”), Biological Invasions (“Effects of non-native plants on the native insect community of Delaware”) and Environmental Entomology (“An evaluation of butterfly gardens for restoring habitat for the monarch butterfly”). And then popularizing books aimed at changing the face of America’s backyards: Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife With Native Plants and, this year, Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard. And in turn a busy schedule of talks before professional organizations, environmental groups, local conservation societies, landscape designers—anyone who would listen, basically.

Squirrels aren’t the only animals that like acorns. Weevils develop inside the oaknuts, and the larvae, in turn, nourish blue jays and woodpeckers

(Matthew Cicanese)

When insects disappear, humans may not take much notice, but the recent population declines of two species have received a great deal of attention: the monarch butterfly, because it’s an iconic, easily recognizable and beautiful creature; and the honeybee, because it’s needed to pollinate crops. But those episodes are symptomatic of a larger disruption in the ecosystem. Tallamy estimates that the worldwide population of arthropods, chiefly insects, has declined by 45 percent from preindustrial times. Without insects, it would be the case that lizards, frogs and toads, birds and mammals, from rodents up through bears, would lose all or a large part of their diets. “The little things that run the world are disappearing,” he says. “This is an ecological crisis that we’re just starting to talk about.”

Tallamy is 68, graying, soft-spoken and diffident. In his talks he cloaks the urgency of his message with an understated wit, as when he presses the unpopular cause of poison ivy, whose berries at certain times of the year are an important food for the downy woodpecker and other birds. “When do you get a rash from poison ivy?” he asks an audience. “When you try to pull it out! Ignore your poison ivy. You can run faster than it can.” To which many people would reply: “Nature had plenty of poison ivy and insects in it the last time I was there.”

But to Tallamy, that attitude is precisely the problem. It speaks to a definition of “nature” as co-extensive with “wilderness,” and excludes the everyday landscape inhabited by virtually all Americans. The ecosystem cannot be sustained just by national parks and forests. A statistic he frequently cites is that 86 percent of the land east of the Mississippi is privately owned. A large fraction of that acreage is either under cultivation for food or planted in a monoculture of lawn, a landscape that for ecological purposes might as well be a parking lot.

To Tallamy, spiders serve as a linchpin species to birds because they are the second most important food, outweighed in nutritive value only by caterpillars.

(Matthew Cicanese)

Tallamy incorporated his thinking into “Homegrown National Park,” an aspirational project to repurpose half of America’s lawnscape for ecologically productive use. That would comprise more than 20 million acres, the equivalent of nearly ten Yellowstones. The intention is to unite fragments of land scattered across the country into a network of habitat, which could be achieved, he wrote in Bringing Nature Home, “by untrained citizens with minimal expense and without any costly changes to infrastructure.” The plots wouldn’t have to be contiguous, although that would be preferable. Moths and birds can fly, and you’re helping them just by reducing the distance they have to travel for food.

“Every little bit helps,” Tallamy says. “Most people don’t own 50 acres, so it’s not going to be that hard. The minimal thing is, you plant a tree and it’s the right tree. Look at what’s happened at my house.”

The idea was picked up by the writer Richard Louv, who coined the term “nature-deficit disorder” in his jeremiad Last Child in the Woods, and by the Canadian naturalist and philanthropist David Suzuki, whose foundation is supporting an effort to implement the project on a limited scale in Toronto.

Even a small patch of Pennsylvania woodland, if allowed to grow wild, generates a vast ecosystem: Native crabapples persist into winter and feed foxes and wild turkeys.

(Matthew Cicanese)

Tallamy walks his land in all seasons, wrenching from the soil the occasional Japanese honeysuckle that made the mistake of venturing onto his property, checking up on his winterberries and sweet pepperbush, looking for leaves that have been chewed by insects and the stems of berries eaten by birds. Occasionally he will do a moth survey, hanging a white sheet in his woods at night behind a mercury vapor lamp. The diversity of insect life he encounters is eye-opening even to him; last year he added more than 100 species to his property list, including a few he had to look up to identify. (There are around 11,000 species of moths in the United States, and 160,000 worldwide.) Near his front door is a 35-foot-tall white oak that he planted from an acorn, ignoring the advice some landscapers give against planting oaks, because you won’t live long enough to enjoy them at their mature size, which may take 300 years. “Well, if you can only enjoy a 300-year-old oak, I guess that’s true,” he says dryly. He has collected 242 species of caterpillars from the tree in his yard—so far.

Tallamy is a great proponent of the ecological benefits of caterpillars, a single one of which has the nutritional value of as many as 200 aphids. “They’re soft, you can stuff them down the beak of your offspring without damaging their esophagus,” he says approvingly. “They contain carotenoids. Birds take the carotenoids and build pigments out of them. That’s how you make a prothonotary warbler.”

He acknowledges that not all homeowners enjoy the sight of caterpillars munching on the leaves of their trees. For them he recommends what he calls his Ten-Step Program: “Take ten steps back from the trunk and all your insect problems go away.”

Mushrooms enrich the teeming soil when they decompose.

(Matthew Cicanese)

Tallamy’s principles have a particular resonance with people—like me—who consider themselves environmentalists but landscaped on the principle “if it looks good, plant it.” He says he’s sometimes surprised at how well his message is received. “I thought there would be quite a bit of push back,” he muses. “But there hasn’t been. I’m suggesting we cut the lawn area in half. I assume they just aren’t taking me seriously. Early on I remember a nurseryman in the audience glowering at me, and I heard him muttering ‘You’re trying to put us out of business.’ I don’t want to put them out of business. I get a lot of invitations from the nursery industry, trade shows, landscape architects. All I’m saying is add one criterion to what you use when you choose your plants”—whether a plant is native. “You can’t argue against it.”

Actually, you can. Tallamy has a long-standing scientific disagreement with an entomologist at the University of California at Davis, Arthur Shapiro. Shapiro grew up in Philadelphia, where, he says, the Norway maple on his block in the 1960s was host to at least three species of moth caterpillar: the American dagger moth, the Crecopia silk moth,and the Lunate Zale moth. “Tallamy invokes the diversity of caterpillars as an indicator of the superiority of native plants over nonnative plants,” Shapiro says. “It’s unsurprising that most of them feed on native plants. What goes right by Tallamy is the extent to which native insects switch and adapt to nonnative plants.

“Here in California we are probably more heavily impacted by naturalized plants than any other state except Hawaii. Our low-elevation butterflies are heavily dependent on nonnative plants. Their native host plants have been largely eradicated, but to their good fortune, humans introduced nonnative plants that are not only acceptable but in some instances superior to native hosts. Most California natives in cultivation are of no more butterfly interest than nonnatives, and most of the best butterfly flowers in our area are exotic.”

The much-reviled (but also beloved by some) eucalyptus trees that have colonized the Central California coast now harbor overwintering monarch butterflies, Shapiro says, although for the most part the insect populations they support are different from those found in native habitats. But his attitude is, so what? The marine blue, a butterfly native to the desert Southwest, where it feeds on acacia and mesquite, has expanded its range into the suburbs of Southern California, feeding on leadwort, a perennial flowering shrub native to South Africa. It is botanically unrelated to acacia and mesquite, but by some accident of biochemistry is a suitable host for the marine blue caterpillar, which has adapted to its new host. “That sort of process is happening all the time all around us,” Shapiro says.

Tallamy begs to differ. The examples Shapiro cites, in his view, represent either anecdotal findings of limited scientific value (like the caterpillars on the street tree from Shapiro’s childhood), or anomalous exceptions to the rule that introduced species support a fraction of the insect life of the plants they replace. A ginkgo tree might look like a functional part of an ecosystem, but the Chinese native might as well be a statue for all the good it does. The well-publicized instances of alien species that found American vegetation to their taste—Asian long-horned beetles, European corn borers, gypsy moths—have created the misleading impression that to an insect, one tree is as good as another. But those are exceptional cases, Tallamy maintains, and the great majority of insects accidentally introduced to North America are never heard from again. “Remember, the horticulture trade screens plants before they introduce them into the market. Any plant that is vulnerable to serious attack by native insects is screened out.”

On one level, this dispute reflects that Tallamy and Shapiro have studied very different ecosystems. As Tallamy wrote in Bringing Nature Home, he was “forced to slight western North America and focus on the Lepidoptera that occur on woody plants in eight states of the eastern deciduous forest biome.” The scientists’ disagreement is also partly over time scales. Tallamy acknowledges that natural selection will allow some native insects to evolve the ability to eat whatever is growing in front of them, or be replaced by species that can, and that birds will figure out a way to make a living off the newcomers. But he thinks this is likely to take thousands of generations to have an impact on the food web. Shapiro maintains he has seen it occur within his own lifetime.

It’s fair to say Tallamy sometimes pursues his passion for native flora to the point of single-mindedness. He is the rare environmentalist who doesn’t bring up climate change at the first opportunity, not because he doesn’t care about it, but because he wants to stick to his chosen issue. “Climate change is not what’s driving this problem,” he says. “If there were no climate change anywhere, it would be just as important. It’s driven by poor plant choice and habitat destruction. I don’t like to mix the two. Right now the culture is, ‘Every problem we have is related to climate,’ and that’s not the case.”

He also can be nonchalant about some of the adjustments and sacrifices entailed by his plan for saving the planet. He suffered from allergies to ragweed pollen for decades, he writes in Nature’s Best Hope, but is willing to forgive the plant on the basis that “the ragweed genus Ambrosia is the eighth most productive herbaceous genus in the East, supporting caterpillar development for 54 species of moths.” He doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that the phylum of arthropods includes, besides butterflies and honeybees, about 900 species of Ixodida, which includes ticks. “I think I’ve had Lyme around a half-dozen times,” he says, as he plunges casually into a chest-high thicket in early autumn, “but I’m one of the people who get the rash”—the telltale bull’s-eye marker of an infected bite by the deer tick, which not all patients evince—“so I was able to catch it and treat it each time.”

Anyone following Tallamy’s landscaping dictums might want to, at least, tuck their pants into their socks when they walk around their yard. That is a small sacrifice given the enormousness of the problem he wants to solve. But even people willing to give over half their lawn for the benefit of caterpillars might be daunted by the task of replacing it according to Tallamy’s prescription. Saving the ecosystem isn’t as simple as just letting nature take over your backyard. In nature the race is to the swift, even for plants. “There’s a time in the spring when plants from Asia leap out before plants from North America,” he tells an audience, projecting a picture taken in a local park in late March. “All of the green you see is plants from Asia, the usual suspects: multi-flora rose, Oriental bittersweet, Japanese honeysuckle, privet, barberry, burning bush, ailanthus, Norway maple, all escapees from our garden. You go into almost any natural area around here, a third of the vegetation is from Asia.” Invasive species are called that for a reason, and repelling them is hard, and never-ending, work.

Moreover, not all native plants are created equal, at least from the point of view of an insect. Across a wide range of North American biomes, about 14 percent of plants make 90 percent of the insect food, he says. These are the keystone species that keep the food web healthy, and the most important are four genera of native trees: oaks, poplars, willows and cherries. But also hickory, chestnut, elms and birches, and joe-pye weed, aster, marsh marigold, skunk cabbage, snakeweed. Some seem worth planting just for the poetry of their names: Chickasaw plum, chokecherry, wax myrtle, devil’s beggar’s-tick, false indigo, hairy bush clover, cypress panicgrass.

But insects aren’t the only creatures that evolved to consume the native vegetation of North America. Tallamy’s ten-step rule for making insect damage disappear to the naked eye doesn’t apply to deer. As he trudges alongside a shallow ravine on his property he points to a small clump of trees on the other side that have been denuded from the ground up to nearly shoulder height. “There’s the browse line on Eastern red cedar,” he says sourly. One reason landscapers favor certain exotic species is that deer don’t eat them. Tallamy’s solution for controlling deer is another one of his idealistic, if not altogether practical, recommendations: “Bring back predators!” he says cheerfully.

Tallamy stops on his walk to adjust a wire barrier around a native azalea. “If I wasn’t around to keep up this fence,” he muses, “the deer would eat it all. So you say, why bother?

“That’s a good question.

“But I do.”

“Natural” doesn’t always mean untouched. Tallamy uproots invasive plants, like this fast-growing porcelain-berry, a vine originally from East Asia, introduced in the 1870s.

(Matthew Cicanese)

I visited Tallamy not long before he set out for ten days in the mountains of Peru, where he was consulting with organizations that promote the practice of growing coffee plants beneath the tree canopy (“shade-grown coffee”) to conserve bird habitat. He wanted to investigate which trees provide the best ecological diversity. Before I leave, he quotes Wilson one more time, from his famous talk on “The Importance and Conservation of Invertebrates.” The passage goes like this:

“The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don’t need us. If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change….But if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months. Most of the fishes, amphibians, birds and mammals would crash to extinction about the same time. Next would go the bulk of the flowering plants and with them the physical structure of the majority of forests and other terrestrial habitats of the world.

“The earth would rot.”

Wilson gave that talk in 1987. “It was,” Tallamy says dryly, “a theoretical worry back then.”

So it is less of a theoretical worry now, and more of a real one. But Tallamy is doing what he can to head it off, and he wants the whole country to pitch in. Homegrown National Park is meant to bring about not just a horticultural revolution, but a cultural one, bridging the human-dominated landscape and the natural world. “If you do this at your house or in your local park, you don’t have to go to Yellowstone to interact with nature,” Tallamy says. “You won’t have bison, you won’t have Mystic Falls, but you can have nature outside your door. Isn’t that what you want for your kids—and for yourself?”

To Tallamy, the nation’s backyards are more than ripe for a makeover. Here are some of his suggestions to help rejuvenators hit the ground running.

1. Shrink your lawn. Tallamy recommends halving the area devoted to lawns in the continental United States—reducing water, pesticide and fertilizer use. Replace grass with plants that sustain more animal life, he says: “Every little bit of habitat helps.”

2. Remove invasive plants. Introduced plants sustain less animal diversity than natives do. Worse, some exotics crowd out indigenous flora. Notable offenders: Japanese honeysuckle, Oriental bittersweet, multiflora rose and kudzu.

3. Create no-mow zones. Native caterpillars drop from a tree’s canopy to the ground to complete their life cycle. Put mulch or a native ground cover such as Virginia creeper (not English ivy) around the base of a tree to accommodate the insects. Birds will benefit, as well as moths and butterflies.

4. Equip outdoor lights with motion sensors. White lights blazing all night can disturb animal behavior. LED devices use less energy, and yellow light attracts fewer flying insects.

5. Plant keystone species. Among native plants, some contribute more to the food web than others. Native oak, cherry, cottonwood, willow and birch are several of the best tree choices.

6. Welcome pollinators. Goldenrod, native willows, asters, sunflowers, evening primrose and violets are among the plants that support beleaguered native bees.

7. Fight mosquitoes with bacteria. Inexpensive packets containing Bacillus thuringiensis can be placed in drains and other wet sites where mosquitoes hatch. Unlike pesticide sprays, the bacteria inhibit mosquitoes but not other insects.

8. Avoid harsh chemicals. Dig up or torch weeds on hardscaping, or douse with vinegar. Discourage crabgrass by mowing lawn 3 inches high.

#Nature

#Nature

[jakehglover]

Where Have All Our Insects Gone?

By Dr. Mercola

They creep along the ground, fly through the air and may sometimes sting you. It may seem as if the outdoor world has gotten more hospitable in recent years as the numbers of insects inhabiting your garden and splattering your windshield have drastically declined. However, reducing numbers and varieties of insects has a substantial overall impact on the environment and the future of the earth as we know it.

Entomologists from around the world are tracking the rapidly declining number of insects, and are concerned by the data they're collecting. As noted by the distinguished Harvard biologist Edward O Wilson, Ph.D.,1 "If all humankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."

These tiny and seemingly inconsequential bugs hold great power in plant pollination, soil microbial diversification, environmental cleanup and wildlife support. Insects are in a unique position to perform these functions in what appears to be a flawless and effortless fashion. Tragically, declines are now observed in many different insect populations. Overall diversification is also declining.

Insects Are in Serious Trouble

Since 1989, scientists from the Entomological Society Krefeld have collected insects in a nature preserve and along protected areas of western Germany.2 They use traps to collect specimens of local insects for research and education. Over the years, the team recognized the number of insects being collected each summer was getting lower and lower. Subsequently, the data from Krefeld was analyzed, finding a significant decline in the number of flying insects in western Germany.

Another study combined previous data and developed a global index for invertebrate abundance, showing a 45 percent decline over four decades. This study pointed out that of the 3,623 invertebrate species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, 42 percent are classified as threatened with extinction.3

What's more, from 1989 to 2016, the average weight of insects caught in Germany between May and October fell 77 percent. During the height of summer in those years, the weight of insects caught fell by 82 percent. Hans de Kroon, Ph.D., involved in analyzing the data said,4 "We were expecting declines, but the extent of them was tremendous. If this was in agricultural settings, we wouldn't be quite so surprised. But it's especially alarming that it's happening in nature reserves."

The data, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found the flying insect population in Germany's nature reserves had declined by more than 75 percent over the 27-year study. The researchers wrote the loss of diversity and abundance is expected to provoke a cascade effect on food supplies and jeopardize ecosystems.5 Evidence of the decline of individual species has been apparent for years. However, this study took a broad view of entire populations.

For instance, populations of European butterflies have been cut in half since 1990, honey bee colonies have been cut by 59 percent in North America since World War II and British moths have dropped by 30 percent per decade.6 The research group focused on the entire spectrum of flying insects, concluding7 "It confirms the widespread, windscreen phenomenon. Any truck driver in the developed world will tell you that they used to squash a lot of insects on the windscreen. Now the windscreen stays clean."

Australia and Great Britain Experience Similar Declines

Anecdotal evidence is also present in Australia and Great Britain, where scientists have noted a decline in insect population but are at a loss in determining the cause.8 Jack Hasenpusch is an entomologist and owner of the Australian Insect Farm,9 where he collects swarms of wild insects during the summer months. He noticed that in the past few years some insect varieties have dropped off and he attributed this to a lack of rainfall.

However, the reduction in insect population has continued to fall. Hasenpusch reports speaking to entomologists in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Italy, all telling similar stories.10 University of Sydney entomologist Cameron Webb primarily researches mosquitoes and reports their numbers are also declining across New South Wales.11 He believes this is indicative of the situation with other insect populations.

Without formal research, it is difficult to make accurate predictions or assessments about the numbers of insects in Australia. However, Webb believes it's important to listen to entomologists, ecologists and other researchers who are in the field on a regular basis. He commented:12

"I don't study cicadas, but I know what cicada numbers are like from year to year because I'm out and about in my local wetlands. When experts are relaying this kind of information it is something that we need to turn our mind to and think about what could be going on, and more importantly how do we work out if this is actually happening and what we do about it."

Similar reductions in insect populations are being reported from Great Britain. Chris Packham,13 naturalist, conservationist and TV presenter, recently took to Twitter, commenting on the absence of insects during a weekend at his home. Packham tweeted he had not seen a single butterfly in his garden and rarely sees craneflies or moths, which were commonplace when he was a boy. He wrote,14 "Our generation is presiding over an ecological apocalypse and we've somehow or other normalized it."

In Great Britain, populations of native ladybirds are crashing, three-quarters of butterfly species have dropped in numbers and bees are suffering major declines in population.15 Cicadas, beetles and moths also face some of the same challenges, with the V-moth recording a 99 percent fall in numbers between 1968 and 2007, according to The Guardian. It's now threatened with extinction.

Crucial Consequences of Declining Insect Populations

While it may be difficult to get excited about combating the loss of insects, this ecological disaster may ultimately affect your food prices at the grocery store. One of the best illustrations of the ecological importance can be seen in bird populations. Without insects, many bird species face starvation and some believe this is already triggering serious declines and numbers.16 Wildlife author Michael McCarthy believes Britain's farmland birds have been cut in half since 1970, with some declines being outright catastrophic.

For instance, the spotted flycatcher, a specialist predator of aerial insects, has declined in number by more than 95 percent. The link between insects and the number of bird species was again confirmed in a study by Aberdeen University.17 Their data showed a drastic decline in cuckoo birds in some areas of England, closely linked to a similar decline in numbers of tiger moth caterpillars, one of the primary food sources for the cuckoo.

A study by Canadian biologists18 suggests bird species that depend on aerial insects have suffered a greater decline in recent years than birds feeding primarily on seeds.19 Germany's Federal Agency for nature conservation stresses insects are not only a major food source for birds, but also for bats and amphibians. Nearly 60 percent of birds rely on insects for food and 80 percent of wild plants depend on them for pollination.20

Tanya Latty, entomology teaching fellow at Sydney University School of Life and Environmental Sciences believes it's particularly worrying the declines have been reported in protected areas, meaning agricultural or urban areas may reveal an even more pronounced trend.21 She is also concerned we are underestimating the importance of insects, which make up approximately 70 percent of all animal species.

Insects not only pollinate the crops, but also contribute to pest control, and are crucial to waste management and biodiversity. In fact, Latty points out most waste in urban areas is eliminated by ants and cockroaches. Species that rely on insects as their food source, including predators that rely on these animals further up the food chain, are likely to suffer from the declining number of insects in the ecosystem.

One study estimates insects contribute $57 billion annually to the economy in the U.S., just through pollination, pest control, wildlife nutrition and dung burial.22 The drop in insect population is estimated to have far-reaching effects on the food economy, ecology and the future of the planet.

Multiple Reasons Behind Insect Armageddon

Each of the reasons theorized by scientists for the declining insect population have one common factor — they are all man-made, including urbanization, pesticides, pollution and changing climates.23 Entomologists believe it may also be related to rising sea levels and the elimination of plants critical for some insects to complete their development.24

Insecticides are designed to kill pests on crops. However, while they are intended to kill them directly on the plant, a special class of these chemicals — neonicotinoids — are believed to be a prime culprit behind mass die-offs of bees and butterflies. The chemical was partially banned in Europe in 2013,25 but remains one of the more popular insecticides in use, despite its history of compromising bee populations. The chemical affects the insects' memory and spatial skills, preventing them from finding food.26

Water-soluble pesticides can also leach out of the fields after they are applied to the crops,27 and have been found in high concentrations in nectar and pollen in wild flowers near treated fields. Although the levels are not sufficient to kill the insect directly, they affect their ability to navigate and communicate, and thus proliferate. The crops the insecticides are designed to protect, such as wheat and corn fields blanketing the U.S. Midwest, end up supporting almost no insect life at all.28

Although the team from Germany did not find evidence to support the hypothesis that habitat loss and climate change were important factors in the decline of insect populations,29 they did not look at large scale climate events such as prolonged droughts.

They were also unable to measure the effect of habitat fragmentation, which is different from reducing the overall amount of habitat available to the insects. Fragmentation can happen with small housing developments bordered by woods and fields on either side, or small agricultural plots.

Increasing urbanization may also expose flying insects to high levels of light pollution.30 Studies have already suggested artificial light at night has a negative impact on insects. Researchers have now discovered regions with high levels of light pollution at night have experienced a sharp decline in flying insects.

According to scientists from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, half of all insect species are nocturnal and depend on darkness and natural light from the moon for orientation, to escape predators and to seek food and reproduce. Artificial lighting disturbs this natural behavior and reduces their chances for survival. The researchers summarized their findings, saying:31

"Our overview study shows that artificial light at night is widely present and can have complex impacts on agricultural areas, with unknown consequences for biodiversity and crop production. Thus, light pollution should be generally considered as a potential ecosystem disturbance in future studies to identify ways in which practical steps can be taken to reduce environmental concerns."

Scientists See Some Populations Increasing While Others Decrease

Although most scientists are highly concerned by declining biodiversity and dramatic reductions in insect populations, some do not share concern over the critical nature of the unfolding events. Professor Helen Roy of the Center for Ecology and Hydrology retells success stories where insect populations have recovered, and she continues to be optimistic.32

Roy identified an explosion in the number of ladybirds and painted lady butterflies occurring in the past, as well as one study demonstrating some pollinators declined by 32 percent in one area while others became 16 percent more widespread. David Gibbons, from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,33 agrees not every investigation about insects reveals irrevocable decline, although he believes the overall picture is worrying.

However, while the proliferation of one species is heartening, it demonstrates an imbalance in biodiversity as others are rapidly declining. In much the same way the human gut microbiome requires balanced and diverse bacteria to function optimally, the ecosystem, built on a diverse population of insects, may not function well when one species gains a significant ecological advantage over another.

How You Can Help

There are several ways you can help to increase the population of insects.

• Avoid insecticide use at home: While you likely have no direct control over insecticide use in agricultural concerns, you can control what you use in your own garden. Investigate natural methods to control specific pests, such as introducing natural insect predators, planting near other plants that are inhospitable to the pests, or using mechanical methods such as diatomaceous earth.

• Buy organic: How you spend your money has a big impact on farmers and large agricultural concerns. Businesses respond to their customers when their customers vote with their wallet. As more people purchase organically grown produce, more farmers will produce those products to meet the demand.

Since organic farmers do not use synthetic herbicides and pesticides and employ farming techniques designed to improve biodiversity across a wide spectrum, insect biodiversity is greatly improved and supported by organic farms.

• Plant a garden: I think some of the best tasting vegetables are those I can pick directly from my garden and eat the same day they are harvested. Even if you have a small yard or live in an apartment, there are many plants able to thrive in containers. In this way you also control what seeds you use and how you control pests and disease.

• Contact your congressman or senator: Your government representatives are heavily lobbied by big agrichemical concerns. They also need to hear from you — the people they represent in government. Through a simple letter writing campaign in your area, you may be able to make a difference in the chemicals used, light pollution, or the creation of insect friendly habitats. Make it a habit to contact your congressman and your senator,34 and track their voting records.35

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/06/30/where-have-all-our-insects-gone.aspx

[sherristockman]

Where Have All Our Insects Gone? Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola They creep along the ground, fly through the air and may sometimes sting you. It may seem as if the outdoor world has gotten more hospitable in recent years as the numbers of insects inhabiting your garden and splattering your windshield have drastically declined. However, reducing numbers and varieties of insects has a substantial overall impact on the environment and the future of the earth as we know it. Entomologists from around the world are tracking the rapidly declining number of insects, and are concerned by the data they're collecting. As noted by the distinguished Harvard biologist Edward O Wilson, Ph.D.,1 "If all humankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos." These tiny and seemingly inconsequential bugs hold great power in plant pollination, soil microbial diversification, environmental cleanup and wildlife support. Insects are in a unique position to perform these functions in what appears to be a flawless and effortless fashion. Tragically, declines are now observed in many different insect populations. Overall diversification is also declining. Insects Are in Serious Trouble Since 1989, scientists from the Entomological Society Krefeld have collected insects in a nature preserve and along protected areas of western Germany.2 They use traps to collect specimens of local insects for research and education. Over the years, the team recognized the number of insects being collected each summer was getting lower and lower. Subsequently, the data from Krefeld was analyzed, finding a significant decline in the number of flying insects in western Germany. Another study combined previous data and developed a global index for invertebrate abundance, showing a 45 percent decline over four decades. This study pointed out that of the 3,623 invertebrate species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, 42 percent are classified as threatened with extinction.3 What's more, from 1989 to 2016, the average weight of insects caught in Germany between May and October fell 77 percent. During the height of summer in those years, the weight of insects caught fell by 82 percent. Hans de Kroon, Ph.D., involved in analyzing the data said,4 "We were expecting declines, but the extent of them was tremendous. If this was in agricultural settings, we wouldn't be quite so surprised. But it's especially alarming that it's happening in nature reserves." The data, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found the flying insect population in Germany's nature reserves had declined by more than 75 percent over the 27-year study. The researchers wrote the loss of diversity and abundance is expected to provoke a cascade effect on food supplies and jeopardize ecosystems.5 Evidence of the decline of individual species has been apparent for years. However, this study took a broad view of entire populations. For instance, populations of European butterflies have been cut in half since 1990, honey bee colonies have been cut by 59 percent in North America since World War II and British moths have dropped by 30 percent per decade.6 The research group focused on the entire spectrum of flying insects, concluding7 "It confirms the widespread, windscreen phenomenon. Any truck driver in the developed world will tell you that they used to squash a lot of insects on the windscreen. Now the windscreen stays clean." Australia and Great Britain Experience Similar Declines Anecdotal evidence is also present in Australia and Great Britain, where scientists have noted a decline in insect population but are at a loss in determining the cause.8 Jack Hasenpusch is an entomologist and owner of the Australian Insect Farm,9 where he collects swarms of wild insects during the summer months. He noticed that in the past few years some insect varieties have dropped off and he attributed this to a lack of rainfall. However, the reduction in insect population has continued to fall. Hasenpusch reports speaking to entomologists in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Italy, all telling similar stories.10 University of Sydney entomologist Cameron Webb primarily researches mosquitoes and reports their numbers are also declining across New South Wales.11 He believes this is indicative of the situation with other insect populations. Without formal research, it is difficult to make accurate predictions or assessments about the numbers of insects in Australia. However, Webb believes it's important to listen to entomologists, ecologists and other researchers who are in the field on a regular basis. He commented:12 "I don't study cicadas, but I know what cicada numbers are like from year to year because I'm out and about in my local wetlands. When experts are relaying this kind of information it is something that we need to turn our mind to and think about what could be going on, and more importantly how do we work out if this is actually happening and what we do about it." Similar reductions in insect populations are being reported from Great Britain. Chris Packham,13 naturalist, conservationist and TV presenter, recently took to Twitter, commenting on the absence of insects during a weekend at his home. Packham tweeted he had not seen a single butterfly in his garden and rarely sees craneflies or moths, which were commonplace when he was a boy. He wrote,14 "Our generation is presiding over an ecological apocalypse and we've somehow or other normalized it." In Great Britain, populations of native ladybirds are crashing, three-quarters of butterfly species have dropped in numbers and bees are suffering major declines in population.15 Cicadas, beetles and moths also face some of the same challenges, with the V-moth recording a 99 percent fall in numbers between 1968 and 2007, according to The Guardian. It's now threatened with extinction. Crucial Consequences of Declining Insect Populations While it may be difficult to get excited about combating the loss of insects, this ecological disaster may ultimately affect your food prices at the grocery store. One of the best illustrations of the ecological importance can be seen in bird populations. Without insects, many bird species face starvation and some believe this is already triggering serious declines and numbers.16 Wildlife author Michael McCarthy believes Britain's farmland birds have been cut in half since 1970, with some declines being outright catastrophic. For instance, the spotted flycatcher, a specialist predator of aerial insects, has declined in number by more than 95 percent. The link between insects and the number of bird species was again confirmed in a study by Aberdeen University.17 Their data showed a drastic decline in cuckoo birds in some areas of England, closely linked to a similar decline in numbers of tiger moth caterpillars, one of the primary food sources for the cuckoo. A study by Canadian biologists18 suggests bird species that depend on aerial insects have suffered a greater decline in recent years than birds feeding primarily on seeds.19 Germany's Federal Agency for nature conservation stresses insects are not only a major food source for birds, but also for bats and amphibians. Nearly 60 percent of birds rely on insects for food and 80 percent of wild plants depend on them for pollination.20 Tanya Latty, entomology teaching fellow at Sydney University School of Life and Environmental Sciences believes it's particularly worrying the declines have been reported in protected areas, meaning agricultural or urban areas may reveal an even more pronounced trend.21 She is also concerned we are underestimating the importance of insects, which make up approximately 70 percent of all animal species. Insects not only pollinate the crops, but also contribute to pest control, and are crucial to waste management and biodiversity. In fact, Latty points out most waste in urban areas is eliminated by ants and cockroaches. Species that rely on insects as their food source, including predators that rely on these animals further up the food chain, are likely to suffer from the declining number of insects in the ecosystem. One study estimates insects contribute $57 billion annually to the economy in the U.S., just through pollination, pest control, wildlife nutrition and dung burial.22 The drop in insect population is estimated to have far-reaching effects on the food economy, ecology and the future of the planet. Multiple Reasons Behind Insect Armageddon Each of the reasons theorized by scientists for the declining insect population have one common factor — they are all man-made, including urbanization, pesticides, pollution and changing climates.23 Entomologists believe it may also be related to rising sea levels and the elimination of plants critical for some insects to complete their development.24 Insecticides are designed to kill pests on crops. However, while they are intended to kill them directly on the plant, a special class of these chemicals — neonicotinoids — are believed to be a prime culprit behind mass die-offs of bees and butterflies. The chemical was partially banned in Europe in 2013,25 but remains one of the more popular insecticides in use, despite its history of compromising bee populations. The chemical affects the insects' memory and spatial skills, preventing them from finding food.26 Water-soluble pesticides can also leach out of the fields after they are applied to the crops,27 and have been found in high concentrations in nectar and pollen in wild flowers near treated fields. Although the levels are not sufficient to kill the insect directly, they affect their ability to navigate and communicate, and thus proliferate. The crops the insecticides are designed to protect, such as wheat and corn fields blanketing the U.S. Midwest, end up supporting almost no insect life at all.28 Although the team from Germany did not find evidence to support the hypothesis that habitat loss and climate change were important factors in the decline of insect populations,29 they did not look at large scale climate events such as prolonged droughts. They were also unable to measure the effect of habitat fragmentation, which is different from reducing the overall amount of habitat available to the insects. Fragmentation can happen with small housing developments bordered by woods and fields on either side, or small agricultural plots. Increasing urbanization may also expose flying insects to high levels of light pollution.30 Studies have already suggested artificial light at night has a negative impact on insects. Researchers have now discovered regions with high levels of light pollution at night have experienced a sharp decline in flying insects. According to scientists from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, half of all insect species are nocturnal and depend on darkness and natural light from the moon for orientation, to escape predators and to seek food and reproduce. Artificial lighting disturbs this natural behavior and reduces their chances for survival. The researchers summarized their findings, saying:31 "Our overview study shows that artificial light at night is widely present and can have complex impacts on agricultural areas, with unknown consequences for biodiversity and crop production. Thus, light pollution should be generally considered as a potential ecosystem disturbance in future studies to identify ways in which practical steps can be taken to reduce environmental concerns." Scientists See Some Populations Increasing While Others Decrease Although most scientists are highly concerned by declining biodiversity and dramatic reductions in insect populations, some do not share concern over the critical nature of the unfolding events. Professor Helen Roy of the Center for Ecology and Hydrology retells success stories where insect populations have recovered, and she continues to be optimistic.32 Roy identified an explosion in the number of ladybirds and painted lady butterflies occurring in the past, as well as one study demonstrating some pollinators declined by 32 percent in one area while others became 16 percent more widespread. David Gibbons, from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,33 agrees not every investigation about insects reveals irrevocable decline, although he believes the overall picture is worrying. However, while the proliferation of one species is heartening, it demonstrates an imbalance in biodiversity as others are rapidly declining. In much the same way the human gut microbiome requires balanced and diverse bacteria to function optimally, the ecosystem, built on a diverse population of insects, may not function well when one species gains a significant ecological advantage over another. How You Can Help There are several ways you can help to increase the population of insects. • Avoid insecticide use at home: While you likely have no direct control over insecticide use in agricultural concerns, you can control what you use in your own garden. Investigate natural methods to control specific pests, such as introducing natural insect predators, planting near other plants that are inhospitable to the pests, or using mechanical methods such as diatomaceous earth. • Buy organic: How you spend your money has a big impact on farmers and large agricultural concerns. Businesses respond to their customers when their customers vote with their wallet. As more people purchase organically grown produce, more farmers will produce those products to meet the demand. Since organic farmers do not use synthetic herbicides and pesticides and employ farming techniques designed to improve biodiversity across a wide spectrum, insect biodiversity is greatly improved and supported by organic farms. • Plant a garden: I think some of the best tasting vegetables are those I can pick directly from my garden and eat the same day they are harvested. Even if you have a small yard or live in an apartment, there are many plants able to thrive in containers. In this way you also control what seeds you use and how you control pests and disease. • Contact your congressman or senator: Your government representatives are heavily lobbied by big agrichemical concerns. They also need to hear from you — the people they represent in government. Through a simple letter writing campaign in your area, you may be able to make a difference in the chemicals used, light pollution, or the creation of insect friendly habitats. Make it a habit to contact your congressman and your senator,34 and track their voting records.35

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