a bug’s life
Back in my motorcycling heyday one of my gixer-riding pals had his Arai skid-lid professionally sprayed with scenes and characters from one of Pixar’s early successes, A Bug’s Life, and mighty fine it looked too. The joke was that after we all returned from our Sunday morning countryside heroics our helmet visors were completely decorated with the remains of all manner of insect, hence, it’s a bug’s life. Notwithstanding the fact that this lovely summer has witnessed zero miles on my motorcycle, even I’ve noticed that, apart from pesky wasps, there definitely appears to be fewer and fewer insects in the garden this year, a situation that has led many scientists to call ‘insect armageddon’.
Worldwide studies paint an alarming picture of insect decline: Bee numbers have fallen by up to 40% since 1990; Moths by up to 70% over the last forty years, with some species by an existential 98%; Collectively, a 2014 study in the journal Science, indicated an overall worldwide loss of 45% across all insect species. Furthermore, the average weight of insects, an indicator of health & fertility, has fallen by an equally disturbing 76% between 1989 and 2016.
Insects have been here, on Earth, for about a thousand times longer than we have been, and consequently, it’s true to say they have created the world and ecosystem in which we all live. A Harvard study concluded that if we, humankind, were to disappear, the world would almost instantaneously revert back to the rich and productive state that existed only 10,000 years ago. However, if insects were to go the same way then the whole environment would collapse into chaos and humanity would cease to exist in a matter of a few short months, swiftly followed by all amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, along with all crops and flowering plants. Without insects, no pollination can take place and there’ll be no food whatsoever, either for us or any other species. At the risk of sounding like a Hollywood disaster movie, the planet would become one large corpse, but one that wouldn’t even be able to rot as there’d be no insects to allow the composting process to take place.
The causes of this potentially apocalyptic trend are not yet fully understood but the usual suspects are obviously in the dock: climate change, deforestation, urbanisation, loss of natural habitat, the widespread and indiscriminate use of pesticides, massively intensive farming methods, but also relatively recent causes such as light pollution has shown to disrupt an insect’s ability to both navigate and recognise mating periods. Put them all together and you have the perfect storm for destruction. Reducing and reversing these practices and positively encouraging insect life to flourish is all we can do and only time will tell if we act with the speed and intensity necessary. In the meantime, go easy on those bugs as our life undeniably depends on theirs.
