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<ul class="summary-list"><li>Millions of <keyword id="11611644" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="mayflies">mayflies</keyword> swarm lakeside communities every year and land on any surface they can find.</li><li>Mayfly corpses decompose into a fatty, slippery mess that can make roads and sidewalks dangerous.</li><li>Popular TikToks have documented the <keyword id="6433816" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Insects">insects</keyword> crawling over people, gas stations, and bridges.</li></ul><p>A dense, brown haze rose up in the field next to Tommy Springer.</p><p>Nearly silent, the cloud wasn't smoke or mist - it was thousands of mayflies fluttering in a thick swarm as they mated at sunset.</p><p>"Viewing the swarm was like looking through an amber window screen or tan mesh that had been suspended above the field," Springer, a wildlife and education specialist in Fairfield County, Ohio, told Insider. "I could still see the trees and landscape beyond it, it was just distorted by a cloud of thousands of insects holding a stationary position en masse."</p><p>Sights like this are common in lakeside communities across the US. For a few days each <keyword id="6355648" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="summer">summer</keyword>, mayflies break through the surface of lakes and rivers to begin a mating frenzy. For the few days they live above water, they fly around in swarms and land on any available surface, including people, cars, and buildings. </p> <p>"They're harmless - they can't sting, they can't bite. They're just a mess," Dave McShaffrey, a biology professor at Marietta College, told Insider.</p><p>Mayfly corpses often pile up on roads and sidewalks, where they break down into a fatty, slippery glaze that can cause wipeouts for pedestrians and car accidents for drivers. They also stink like rotten fish when their bodies decompose and are squashed by feet and tires, Springer said.</p><p>"When their bodies mix with the water they form an almost muddy, slick, slushy feeling. It's like a slushy winter snowstorm," Springer said.</p> <p>The insects are found all over the country, but the biggest swarms tend to appear along the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Port Clinton, Ohio, a city located next to Lake Erie, is famous for its yearly mayfly outbreaks.</p><p>Though the insects often congregate near gas stations and other stores that keep their lights on at night, George Black, an employee at a Sunoco Gas Station in Port Clinton, said the mayflies don't drive customers away. Instead, customers show up early to the gas station to collect the deep piles of corpses that have become a hot commodity for local residents.</p><p>"People shovel them up and use them as fertilizer in their yards and gardens," he said. "People love them. They're almost fighting over them."</p> <p>Municipalities have different ways of dealing with the annual emergence. In June, Pennsylvania officials <a href="https://www.mcall.com/news/pennsylvania/mc-nws-pa-susquehanna-bridge-lights-mayflies-20210624-qw633t6jovapnljlcmx565wjlm-story.html">shut down a bridge</a> at night as the throng of mayflies that congregated by the bridge's lights made driving too dangerous. Port Clinton typically turns off lights along one of the main thoroughfares next to Lake Erie and dispatches teams with leaf blowers to clear the insects off of sidewalks and public property in the morning, Tracy Colston, safety service director for Port Clinton, said.</p><p>"We got pelted pretty good with them," he told Insider.</p><p>Mayfly larvae burrow into the silt of lakes and large rivers where they live for about a year until the water reaches a certain temperature every summer. Then, millions of the insects, with dragonfly-like wings, bulging eyes and hair-like tails, rise to the surface and take flight, McShaffrey said. </p> <p>From there, they fly with the wind to the adjacent shore and flock together for mating flights. The mayflies die soon after the females drop their eggs back into the water, McShaffrey said.</p><p>Though the insects are a nuisance, they're a good source of food for fish and swarms of them are an indication of clean water, as mayflies have a a very low toleration for pollution.</p><p>If they bother you, simply turn off the lights.</p><p>"They're going to die in 48 hours anyways," McShaffrey said. "You just sit back and try to enjoy them a couple days out of the year."</p>

Millions of mayflies swarm lakeside communities each summer. 48 hours later they die, leaving behind a slippery mess that can make roads dangerous.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Shipments of more than 2,000 <keyword id="4581" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="general-motors">General Motors</keyword> SUVs were delayed after mayflies landed on the vehicles, leaving behind greasy residue, according to a report from Automotive News. </li><li>Approximately 2,600 <keyword id="6356217" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="GMC">GMC</keyword> Yukons and <keyword id="55200" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Chevrolet">Chevrolet</keyword> Tahoes assembled at GM's Arlington, Texas, plant were affected. </li><li>GM said all the vehicles will be cleaned by the middle of September.</li></ul><p>It's totally normal for new cars to leave the factory with a bug or two, hence the warranty periods. But for a few new General Motors SUVs, the bugs weren't exactly metaphorical.</p><p><a href="https://www.autonews.com/retail/mayflies-dark-spot-gms-launch-big-suvs">Automotive News</a> reported Monday that actual insects — mayflies, to be specific — caused delivery delays and plenty of other problems for thousands of SUVs coming out of GM's Arlington, Texas, plant. Automotive News described a "stubborn black residue" that the bugs left on more than 2,600 Chevrolet Tahoes and GMC Yukons, which were parked and waiting to be shipped to dealers. </p><p>The Tahoe and Yukon are some of GM's most profitable vehicles, and dealerships were already struggling with low inventories <a href="https://www.motortrend.com/news/gm-2021-tahoe-yukon-escalade-on-sale-q1-details/">amid their summer launch</a> due to pandemic-related production slowdowns. </p><p>A GM spokesperson told Business Insider that the residue was a result of mayflies landing on the vehicles and sticking to them. The SUVs were being stored near a lake, where the mayfly population has ballooned due to higher temperatures as of late, the spokesperson said. </p><p>"Plant personnel are rapidly cleaning vehicles so that they arrive to our dealers and customers in flawless condition," the spokesperson said, noting that the mayfly situation "has been addressed had a very minimal impact on our launch."</p><p>GM sent out a bulletin to GMC and Chevy dealers describing the issue and instructing them how to clean the greasy substance off of vehicles, Automotive News reported. According to the report, some dealerships spent hours cleaning vehicles, and one Tahoe's hood was so damaged that it has to be repainted. </p><p>Fewer than 100 of the buggy SUVs arrived at dealerships before being cleaned, and all the vehicles will be scrubbed down by mid September, a GM spokesperson told Business Insider. </p>

Shipments of more than 2,600 General Motors SUVs were delayed after bugs left a 'stubborn black residue' on them

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Citizens Lab/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">An annotated screengrab of an untrue story, provided by research group Citizen Lab as an example of a coordinated disinformation campaign.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Researchers at <a href="https://citizenlab.ca/2019/05/burned-after-reading-endless-mayflys-ephemeral-disinformation-campaign/">the Citizen Lab research group</a> uncovered a vast disinformation network which they say is being backed by Iran.</li><li>The network - dubbed Endless Mayfly - circulated untrue articles seeking to advance narratives critical of Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel, the researchers said.</li><li>The pages aped legitimate websites, often altering their web addresses by one or two characters to give names like Bloomberq or The Indepnedent.</li><li>A spokesman for the Iranian government denied any involvement with the network.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/international?r=US&amp;IR=T">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.</a></li></ul><p>Researchers say they have uncovered a vast fake news network impersonating genuine news organizations and using fake social media profiles to spread disinformation. </p><p>The Canadian Citizen Lab research group, which is part of the University of Toronto, <a href="https://citizenlab.ca/2019/05/burned-after-reading-endless-mayflys-ephemeral-disinformation-campaign/">in a report published Tuesday</a> claimed that Iran is behind the program, which it dubbed Endless Mayfly.</p><p>The researchers say it "spreads falsehoods and amplifies narratives critical of Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Israel."</p><p>In <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/researchers-iran-linked-disinfo-effort-had-personal-touch/2019/05/14/a2502976-75fd-11e9-a7bf-c8a43b84ee31_story.html">a statement to the Associated Press</a>, Iran denied being behind the network.</p><p>The authors published "divisive content" on copycat news websites, often with names that imitated legitimate news websites, such as "Bloomberq," or the "The Indepnedent," the researchers said. </p><p>The technique is known as "typosquatting," in which a website impersonating another is created under a slight variant of its name. </p><p>The trolls created 72 lookalike domains, and 153 fake news articles, with one fake article designed to look like a Bloomberg report suggesting that the CIA would award Saudi Arabia's crown prince with a "medal of honor."</p><p>Citizen Lab said that a the people behind the posts also made fake social media profiles to spread the posts, some of which went as far as sending messages to journalists and activists whom they hoped would repost the material, lending it legitimacy.</p><p>Fake articles contained made-up quotations from a US senator alleging Saudi complicity in terrorism. Articles also claimed that Saudi Arabia was funding Trump's wall on the US-Mexican border and tried to stir tension among Arab Gulf states.</p><p>In one case, Washington-based terrorism expert Ali Al-Ahmed received a direct message on Twitter from Mona A Rahman, who appeared to be a young female activist and critic of Saudi Arabia.</p><p>She tried to lure him to share a fake news article about Israel, posted on a website purporting to be linked to Harvard University.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Citizen Lab</span></p><p class="caption">The Twitter account of 'Mona A.Rahman' has been linked to an Iranian disinformation campaign.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Al-Ahmed said he had previously been targeted by hackers posing as female journalists. </p><p>"They will never stop," Al-Ahmed told the Associated Press. "They think a hot girl can lure me."</p><p>Once an article was pushed out by fake social media profiles and received a certain degree of "amplification" by being retweeted and shared online, the link to the fake website was deleted, Citizen Lab said. It would then be replaced by a link to the legitimate site of the website imitated.</p><p>The report found that the disinformation has close links to a republishing network <a href="https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2018/08/suspected-iranian-influence-operation.html">found by previous investigations to be an "Iranian government-backed disinformation operation."</a></p><p>The Iranian embassy in London told the Associated Press it had nothing to do with the disinformation campaign. It said instead that it was "the biggest victim" of disinformation campaigns, and backed international regulation to curb them.</p><p>In recent years, other adversaries of the US have sought to imitate Russia's operation in the 2016 presidential election and spread fake news and propaganda on social media.</p><p>Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates in January <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/29/dan-coats-2020-election-foreign-interference-1126077">named Iran as one of three foreign powers,</a> alongside Russia and China, which would probably seek to subvert the 2020 presidential election.</p><p>In October, Facebook closed down a network of 82 accounts, pages and groups originating in Iran which sought to spread divisive fake news and propaganda ahead of November's mid-term congressional elections.</p><p>According to the Citizen Lab report, many of the accounts removed by Facebook were linked to the Endless Mayfly network.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/barack-obama-pete-souza-hillary-clinton-situation-room-during-photo-osama-bin-laden-raid-joe-biden-politics-2017-11">White House photographer Pete Souza reveals what it was like to be in the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

A vast disinformation network of copycat fake news sites with names like 'Bloomberq' and 'The Indepnedent' has been pinned on Iran

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>It's mayfly season folks, and things are getting squishy.</p><p>Mayflies, also known as shadflies, are a primitive order of insects that divide into&#xa0;thousands of individual species. They spend most of their lives as sexually immature "nymphs" wiggling around in lakes or sediment, out of sight and mind. But when a particular species in a particular place is ready to breed, they hatch all at once into their final, winged adult forms and swarm for a few brief sex-crazed hours before the females drop the next generation of eggs into the water and they all die.</p><p>Such is the life of this prehistoric-looking swarm bug.</p><p>Mayfly hatchings happen in late spring and early summer (thus the name), and their sheer numbers can cause problems for those humans unfortunate enough to blunder into their death orgies. Here are some of the crazy things the little monsters have done so far in 2016.</p>

Swarms of dying, sex-crazed insects are wreaking havoc all over the US

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Hotel-Bees/bd401d7207284db8bbb3bfd17e8ae29d/12/0">AP Photo/Eric Risberg</a></span></p><p class="caption">Beekeeper Roger Garrison holds a container with a queen bee on the rooftop of a San Francisco hotel, April 18, 2016.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li> Of the world's 1 million known <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/insects-dying-off-sign-of-6th-mass-extinction-2019-2">insect species, 400,000 are in decline</a>, according to a new report..</li><li>Since 1970, 50% of all insects may have disappeared.</li><li>The die-offs are happening because farmers are using <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/epa-banned-pesticides-killing-bees-2019-5">more pesticides</a> to protect crops. Insects are also losing their habitats to farming and urbanization.</li><li>Three-quarters of the world's crops are pollinated by insects, so extinctions could have a major impact on food production.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>Insects are disappearing en masse.</p><p><a href="https://www.somersetwildlife.org/sites/default/files/2019-11/FULL%20AFI%20REPORT%20WEB1_1.pdf">A new report</a> from the Somerset Wildlife Trust in the UK found that 41% of the world's 1 million known insect species are threatened with extinction.</p><p>The decline of butterflies, bees, and other bugs might seem low on a list of environmental concerns that includes rising seas and melting glaciers.</p><p>Yet the loss of these species could be devastating.</p><p>Insects are food sources for countless bird, fish, and mammal species. They recycle nutrients in the soil, and break down dead carcasses and animal waste. Pollinators like bees and hoverflies also perform a crucial role in fruit, vegetable, and nut production.</p><p>But insects are quickly losing their habitats to farmland and urbanization, and are threatened by farmers' <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/epa-banned-pesticides-killing-bees-2019-5">use of pesticides</a> as well.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Michael Fiala/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">A monarch butterfly clings to a plant at the Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, California, December 30, 2014.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>"We can't be sure, but in terms of numbers, we may have lost 50% or more of our insects since 1970 - it could be much more," ecologist Dave Goulson, the author of the new report, wrote. "We just don't know, which is scary ... Perhaps more frightening, most of us have not noticed that anything has changed."</p><h2>'A catastrophic collapse of Earth's ecosystems'</h2><p>According to Goulson's report, "it is hard to avoid the conclusion that there has been a major decline in insect biomass."</p><p>Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, found that in the UK specifically, 23 bee and wasp species have gone extinct in the last century. Butterfly species have declined by as much as 77% since the mid-1970s, and populations of local insect-eating birds, like the spotted flycatcher, have similarly shrunk. </p><p>His work relied heavily on <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320718313636">a February 2019 study</a> in which scientists Francisco Sánchez-Bayo and Kris Wyckhuys looked at 73 historical reports on insect declines around the world. Their results showed that the total mass of all insects on the planet is decreasing by 2.5% per year.</p><p>Beyond the 41% of the world's known insect species that are already in decline, Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys noted that 31% are threatened (according to criteria set by the <a href="https://www.iucn.org/resources/conservation-tools/iucn-red-list-threatened-species">International Union for Conservation of Nature</a>), and 10% are going locally extinct. </p><p>The February study also suggested that moths and butterflies are disappearing; between 2000 and 2009, the UK lost 58% of butterfly species on farmed land. </p><p>Dragonflies, mayflies, and beetles appear to be dying off as well.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/49503155549@N01/9118847302/">Flickr/Jen Forman Orth</a></span></p><p class="caption">A pink-legged tiger moth.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>If this trend continues unabated, Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys warned, the Earth may not have any insects at all by 2119. </p><p>Already, insects' extinction rate is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds, and reptiles. That biodiversity crisis could trigger a "catastrophic collapse of Earth's ecosystems," the authors said.</p><p>Gary Mantle, chief executive of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust (another environmental group in the UK), <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/13/insect-apocalypse-poses-risk-to-all-life-on-earth-conservationists-warn">told The Guardian</a> that "this unnoticed apocalypse should set alarms ringing."</p><h2>Disappearing bees</h2><p>One of the most concerning trends in this insect apocalypse is the decline of honey bees.</p><p>In the US, the number of honey-bee colonies dropped from 6 million in 1947 to just 2.5 million in 2014.</p><p>Between October 2018 and April 2019, about 40% of US honey bee colonies died, according to <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/uom-ubl061919.php">research from the University of Maryland</a>. That's the highest winter bee loss in 13 years.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cape_honey_bee_on_Oxalis.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Researchers have observed a similar problem in the UK: one-third of 353 wild bee and hoverfly species there experienced declines between 1980 and 2013, according to <a href="https://press.nature.com/wp-content/uploads/files/2019/03/41467_2019_Article_8974-1.pdf">a March study</a>.</p><p>Honey bees pollinate $15 billion worth of US food crops, <a href="https://www.apnews.com/e1fd6336b6f74c0fb726865a7c1bce8e">according to the Associated Press</a>. One-third of everything Americans eat comes from pollinators like honey bees, per US Department of Agriculture estimates.</p><p>Worldwide, approximately three-quarters of all crops are pollinated by insects, Goulson said. So insect extinctions could have a major impact on our food production and supply.</p><p>Experts think honey bees are dying due to a combination of decreasing crop diversity, poor beekeeping practices, and loss of habitat. Pesticides like neonicotinoids can also kill bees in droves, causing colony collapses.  </p><p>Goulson reported that 75% of honey samples from around the world contained neonicotinoids.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Mayank Bhardwaj/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">A laborer sprays pesticides on genetically modified cotton crops in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India, October 17, 2017.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>He added that in the UK, the number of pesticide applications has doubled over the last 25 years, and that's primarily to blame for widespread insect declines there.</p><p>To make the problem worse, insect habitats are disappearing as more land area gets used for farmland and urban development around the world.</p><h2>'We can't wait another 25 years before we do anything because it will be too late'</h2><p>Studying changes in insect populations over time is challenging, and many analyses rely heavily on reports about bugs in Europe and North America, even though most insects live in the tropics. Because of this, some scientists have pushed back against the idea that all insects could disappear within a century.</p><p>"I understand the desire to put numbers to these things to facilitate the conversation, but I would say all of those are built on mountains of unknown facts," Michelle Trautwein, an entomologist from the California Academy of Sciences, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/insect-apocalypse-really-upon-us/583018/">told The Atlantic's Ed Yong</a> in February.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/steven-young/2893876500">Steven / Flickr</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>But the data trends we do have are troubling.</p><p><a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809">A 2017 study</a> concluded that populations of flying insects in Germany had decreased by more than 75% percent in the last three decades. <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/44/E10397">Another study</a> conducted in Puerto Rico found that 98% of the island's ground insects had vanished since the 1970s.</p><p>"The overwhelming weight of evidence that exists suggests the rapid decline is a real phenomenon," Goulson <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/13/insect-apocalypse-poses-risk-to-all-life-on-earth-conservationists-warn">told The Guardian</a>.</p><p>Although he agrees that there is a shortage of data on insect population trends, he added: "It really worries me to hear people say we need more long-term studies to be sure. That would be great, but we can't wait another 25 years before we do anything because it will be too late."</p><p>Trautwein agreed that it's better to approach the risk of insect extinctions with caution, rather than disregard.</p><p>"I don't see real danger in overstating the possible severity of insect decline, but there is real danger in underestimating how bad things really are," she told the Atlantic.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bees-cleaning-themselves-slow-motion-amazing-2017-3">Scientists just discovered how bees clean themselves - and the slow-mo footage is mesmerizing</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

More than 50% of insects have disappeared since 1970, an ecologist warns - even more evidence of an 'insect apocalypse'

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>National Weather Service/NOAA</span></p><p class="caption">We hope you didn't need cash</p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p>Once a year, the bugs emerge - millions of them. Every summer, they swarm en masse around the banks of the Mississippi River. It's mating season for mayflies.</p>
<p>There are so many of them, in fact, that they can show up on weather radar.</p>
<p>Check out this weather radar GIF from the evening of July 20, which shows clouds of flies leaving the Upper Mississippi River in Wisconsin and taking to the air to breed.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.crh.noaa.gov/arx/?n=mayflygeneral#July202014">National Weather Service/NOAA</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Though they live underwater for a few years, depending on the species, they only last a week or so after leaving the water - just enough time to breed.</p>
<p>After taking flight, they swarmed the towns of La Crosse, La Crescent, and Stoddard, traveling generally to the north.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>National Weather Service/NOAA</span></p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p>Though it happens every year, this swarm is particularly large. The National Weather Service compares this to the 2012 hatching event, earning the <a href="http://www.crh.noaa.gov/arx/?n=mayflygeneral#June232012" target="_blank">"massive emergence" tag</a> in their records.</p>
<p>In 2012, there were so many that <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/07/theyre-here-massive-mayfly-emergence-in-wisconsin/" target="_blank">officials used snowplows</a> to remove them from the roads.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>National Weather Service/NOAA</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Though the swarm may appear terrifying, and causes car accidents, it's actually a good sign for the health of the river. The flies are sensitive to pollution and <a href="http://www.fws.gov/midwest/lacrossefisheries/mayfly.html" target="_blank">don't survive</a> in dirty water. And they provide a veritable banquet for birds, bats, and other predators.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>National Weather Service/NOAA</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>After finding a mate and breeding, the females return to the river to drop their eggs, and then die.</p>

This Terrifying Swarm Of Flies Is So Massive It Shows Up On Weather Radar

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Hillary Kladke/Getty</span></p><p class="caption">41% of global insect species are at risk, a new study finds.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Roughly 40% of the world's insect species are in decline, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320718313636">a new study shows</a>.</li><li>The die-offs are happening primarily because insects are losing their habitats due to farming and urbanization. The use of pesticides and fertilizers is also to blame, as is climate change.</li><li><span>The study's authors warn that the repercussions of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/germany-insect-population-flying-bugs-climate-change-pesticides-population-decline-2017-10">this loss of Earth's insects</a> could catastrophic.</span><span></span></li><li><span>The rapid shrinking of insect populations is also a sign that the planet is in the midst of a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biological-annihilation-sixth-mass-extinction-2017-7">sixth mass extinction</a>.</span></li></ul><div title="Page 2"><div data-rapid-cpos="4" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec"><p>Somehow, it's easier to be concerned about wolves,<span> sea turtles, and White rhinos dying off than it is to feel remorse over vanishing bugs.</span></p><p>But the loss of insects is a dire threat - one that could trigger a "catastrophic collapse of Earth's ecosystems," a new study warns.</p><p>The research<span>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320718313636">the first global review of its kind</a>, looked at 73 historical reports on insect declines around the world and found</span> that the total mass of all insects on the planets is decreasing by 2.5% per year.</p><p>If this trend continues unabated, the Earth might not have any insects at all come 2119.</p><p>"In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none," Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, a study co-author and researcher at the University of Sydney, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:5;elm:context_link;itc:0" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="5" data-v9y="1">told the Guardian</a> </p><p><span>That's a big problem, since insects are food sources for countless bird, fish, and mammal species. Pollinators like bees and butterflies also perform a crucial role in fruit, vegetable, and nut production.</span></p></div><div data-rapid-cpos="5" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec"><h2>Insects are going extinct 8 times faster than <span>mammals, birds, and reptiles</span></h2><p>Sánchez-Bayo and his co-authors focused their analysis on insects in European and North American countries. They estimated that 41% of insect species are in decline, 31% are threatened (according to criteria set by the <a href="https://www.iucn.org/resources/conservation-tools/iucn-red-list-threatened-species">International Union for Conservation of Nature</a>), and 10% are going locally extinct.</p><p>That extinction rate is eight times faster than the observed pace of extinction for mammals, birds, and reptiles.</p><p>The study suggests that bee species in the UK, Denmark, and North America have taken major hits - bumblebees, honey bees, and wild bee species are all declining. In the US, the number of honey bee colonies dropped from 6 million in 1947 to 2.5 million just six decades later.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>AP</span></p><p class="caption">A California beekeeper inspects his honey bee hive.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Moths and butterflies are also disappearing across Europe and the US. Between 2000 and 2009 alone, the UK lost 58% of butterfly species on farmed land. </p><p>Dragonflies, mayflies, and beetles appear to be dying off as well.</p><p><span>When looking at all animal populations planet-wide (not just insects), according to a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089.full">2017 study</a>, the Earth appears to be undergoing a process of "biological annihilation." That analysis estimated that "as much as 50% of the number of animal individuals that once shared Earth with us are already gone."</span></p></div><p><span>This rapid decline in global biodiversity is sometimes called the "sixth extinction," since it's the sixth time in the history of life on Earth that </span><span>the planet's fauna has experienced a major collapse in numbers. </span></p><p><span>In the past, mass extinctions have been caused by the emergence of ice ages or asteroid collisions. This mass extinction, however, is driven by human activities - namely deforestation, mining, and carbon-dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.</span></p><p><span>"As insects comprise about two thirds of all terrestrial species on Earth, the above trends confirm that the sixth major extinction event is profoundly impacting life forms on our planet," the authors wrote.</span></p><p><span><em><strong>Read More:</strong></em> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biological-annihilation-sixth-mass-extinction-2017-7"><em>Scientists say we're witnessing the planet's sixth mass extinction - and 'biological annihilation' is the latest sign</em></a></span></p><h2>'Catastrophic consequences for ... the survival of mankind'</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Joe Klementovich/Aurora Photos/Getty</span></p><p class="caption">By 2119, all of the world's insects could be gone.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><span>The study emphasizes that insects are "essential for the proper functioning of all ecosystems" as food sources, crop pollinators, pest controllers, and nutrient recyclers in soil.</span></p><p><span>"If insect species losses cannot be halted, this will have catastrophic consequences for both the planet's ecosystems and for the survival of mankind," Sánchez-Bayo told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature">the Guardian</a>.</span></p><p>Substantial declines in insect populations therefore threaten the <span>food, timber, and fiber production </span>that humanity's survival depends on, according to Timothy Schowalter, professor of entomology at Louisiana State University.</p><p>"The <span>pollinator declines jeopardize 35% of our global food supply, which is why European countries are mandating protection and restoration of pollinator habitats," he told Business Insider.</span></p><p><span>Schowalter added that insects also are critical food resources for many birds, fish and other vertebrates, which would disappear if their food source does. </span></p><p><span>"Insects are often maligned, or at least their significant contributions to ecosystem productivity and delivery of ecosystem services are underappreciated," Schowalter said. "In short, if insects and other arthropods do decline, our survival would be threatened."</span></p></div><h2>Farming practices are behind the insect die-off</h2><p><span>This isn't the first time scientists have called attention to plummeting insect populations. </span></p><p><span>In 2017, <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809">a study indicated</a> that 75% of Germany's flying insects <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/germany-insect-population-flying-bugs-climate-change-pesticides-population-decline-2017-10">had disappeared since the 1990s</a>. Another <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/44/E10397">recent study</a> showed that the total biomass of arthropods - creatures like insects, spiders, and lobsters that have jointed legs but no backbone - in Puerto Rico has taken a nose dive since the 1970s. </span></p><p><span>Pesticides and fertilizers, along with heavy land use for farming, are primary drivers of this decline. </span></p><p><span>"Overall, the systematic, widespread and often superfluous use of pesticides in agricultural and pasture land over the past 60 years has negatively impacted most organisms, from insects to birds and bats," the authors of the new study wrote. </span></p><p><span>They added: "The conclusion is clear: unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades."</span></p><p><span>Sánchez-Bayo told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature">the Guardian</a> that he thinks insecticides like neonicotinoids and fipronil are especially damaging.</span></p><p><span> "They sterilize the soil, killing all the grubs," he said. </span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Jayanta Dey </span></p><p class="caption">A farmer sprays pesticide containing monocrotophos on a paddy field at Mohanpur village, about 45 km (28 miles) west of Agartala, capital of India's northeastern state of Tripura, July 25, 2013.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>Climate-change-driven temperature shifts are playing a role in insect deaths, too, though it's not the main factor. </span></p><p>"So far, declines have been related more to land-use changes, especially agricultural intensification, forest fragmentation and urban development, than to temperature change," Schowalter said. </p><div title="Page 15"><div title="Page 15"><p><span>To address the steep decline in insect populations, Sánchez-Bayo and his co-authors are pushing for initiatives to restore insect habitats and cut down the amount of chemicals used in agricultural practices.</span></p><p><span>"I</span>t is imperative that current pesticide usage patterns, mainly insecticides and fungicides, are reduced to a minimum," they wrote.</p></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/londons-first-insect-farm-owners-are-trying-get-people-to-eat-worms-2018-8">London's first insect farm owners are trying get people to eat worms and crickets to save the world</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

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