Insect armageddon
The number of insect species known is about a million, and the number of individual insects alive at any one time is a mind boggling 10 billion billion (1019), with about 300 times the mass of the human population; estimates of the total number of insect species waiting to be discovered go up to 30 million. (1,2) It was therefore concerning when recently it was reported that populations of flying insects had declined by between 76 and 82% in Germany over just 27 years (3). The study was carried out in 63 sites in nature reserves between 1989 and 2016. The technique was a simple one: tent traps...