Imagine a world without insects. It might sound good at first without creepy-crawly bugs and annoying flies in your apartment. However, the consequences would be disastrous.
The number of insects has dropped by more than half in the past decades, according to British biologist Dave Goulson, author of Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse. As insects make up most of the known species on this planet, this data is not good news, The Guardian reported on July 25.
Insects are indeed on the path to extinction, according to the first global scientific review of insect population decline, which was published in the journal Biological Conservation in January 2019. The researchers say intensive agriculture has been the main cause of the decline. Pesticides, in particular, destroy insect habitats. Urbanization and climate change are also significant factors.
"Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades," the researchers wrote in the review. "The repercussions(影响) this will have for the planet's ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least."
What would happen to Earth without insects? It's almost impossible to predict, but the consequences would be far-reaching. We need insects to pollinate(授粉) crops, recycle plant and animal material, keep the soil healthy and much more. Without insects, many animals would have nothing to eat, and the predators of those animals would go hungry as well. The ecosystem would be thrown off balance.
"If insect species losses cannot be halted, this will have catastrophic consequences for both the planet's ecosystems and for the survival of mankind," said Francisco Sanchez-Bayo at the University of Sydney, Australia, one of the authors of the review.
The first step to halting this process is "to engender a society that values the natural world, both for what it does for us and for its own sake", Goulson suggests. "The obvious place to start is with our children, encouraging environmental awareness from an early age."
