Male fertility among humans has dropped tremendously since the 1920’s. How’s that going to work out for the masters of the universe.
Mother Nature has a plan.
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I personally think this article has some merits despite relaying on a limited amount of evidence. Being an avid naturalist since the early 70s I have noticed the drop in certain species that feed on different insect species. Particularly insectivorous birds. During that time (40 years ago) certain species; chimney swifts, common nighthawks, various swallow types seemed much more numerous.
I have also observed the decline of many insect and bird species especially over the last decade. As I'm sure you already know, there are many factors that could be responsible, but I think one of the biggest is the widespread use of insecticides and herbicides such as glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, the most popular weed killer in the U.S. Roundup has been linked to the decline of honey bees, native bees and other pollinators, and to cancer in humans.
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It's not just them. It's too darned hot!
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Wow. I sure hope the same heat effect applies to human sperm.
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This should come as no surprise since the first thing fertility doctors tell male patients is stop wearing briefs and wear boxer shorts if you want to have children because the scrotum is outside the body for cooling. Sperm are temperature sensitive.
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This is a poor article. A single study in a single species does not prove anything about declines in insects world wide. Even the scientist quoted in the article does not agree with the study's conclusions.
Times science editors and writers, please, please stop writing articles publicizing the results of single, unreplicated studies. Past experience has shown that these studies often fail to hold up when replicated.
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Someone needs to get this information to the zillions of bugs that invaded my garden this summer, because they did not get the memo. The whiteflies were relentless, the aphids burgeoned, and at several points this summer, when temperatures had been over one hundred for days, I found myself involuntarily wondering if climate change resulting in a hotter planet would allow insects to take it over, eventually. They bred everywhere, just everywhere, especially in the hedges. Heat does not seem to affect their sperm one iota. I've tried to attract frogs, toads and birds to combat the bugs, but they need water, and we don't have it! Fortunately, the orb weavers returned and set up shop in several places. We now have at least six different county-fair-prize orb weavers who have been glad to join me in ridding us of our excess insect population. Have never loved spiders as much as I do now. Hope that climate change doesn't stop them... toads and birds are already struggling for survival.
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@Allison, Remember that when plants are threatened, by whatever, they throw their energies to reproduction in an attempt to genetically survive. Why not so with insects, or any other species? It's one last grasp for survival.
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@Allison You are taking the right approach in looking for biological controls, but insects exist around the world in all climates, so the question may be how much worse off you are with ones common South of your area.
In any case I suggest capturing some of the pests in a jar and taking them to the Agricultural Department County Extension Agent for recommendations and identification and yes they exist in urban areas to to help gardeners and local farmers both. Spiders do most often eat spiders, but some plants attract aphids, and bats eat their weight in insects daily. You can install a bat house under your highest eve or in another suggested location and use their dung as a rich fertilizer.
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@Allison, the article's research is more on the cold blooded insects. And the warm blooded will take over, the beetle is already killing the saturated trees which in turn are becoming to fodder for a quick fire that has become uncontrollable, CA is a perfect example of the heat and drought and beetles. Currently I am visiting East Coast and sadly read that the same beetle has become prevalent in the Garden State too!
Degraded rain forests and oceans suggest a planetary biological collapse could be be triggered in either. A third prospect is the insect world collapse, or even lower in the trophic chain, the world of microorganisms. We live in a modern world undergoing abrupt planetary warming while simultaneously all life is being steeped in a synthetic, toxic chemical bath. What does it portend for humans?
Pesticides are a logical suspect, but what if the Death Of Insects isn't attributable to that?
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In the original Nature Communications journal article it was stated that "Heatwave treatments exposed individuals for 5 days to temperatures that exceeded the optimum by 5 °C".
Based on that statement it appears that the elevated temperature was held constant day and night for 5 days. If that was the case, then the experimental conditions are far from the real world since during a heat wave, the temperature drops during the night.
Until a more realistic study is done, no one should consider this study's results as representative of what may happen in the future with insects.
In addition, the boxplots in the journal article show that there were treatment individuals which had results comparable to the controls. This would imply that these individuals are genetically adaptable and their genes may ensure the species survives heatwaves due to global warming.
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@Phil, My father and thus his family was assigned to live 3 years in Midwest City, OK, which is a suburb of Oklahoma City. We arrived in the summer and for the first 5 days there the temperature NEVER dropped below 100 F. During the daytime it went up to about 105 F, so do not get carried away with the idea of cool nights.
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@Phil Beetles aren’t living in a heat wave but may stressed by a rapidly heating climate worldwide. We know that all species suffer reduced fertility under stress - human males in USA have suffered lower sperm counts in the last generation -
Researchers found this about a single type of beetle and so the article is extrapolating the results out to all types of insects on the planet...absurd.
There are regions of the world where insects live every day in weather that would be considered "a heat wave". As an organic farmer I can personally attest that dozens of species of insects, both pests and beneficial, multiply more rapidly in periods of intense heat. Cold weather has a much more marked affect on insects than heat does.
I'm sure it's true that insects that are acclimated to certain climate regimes are likely to suffer as Earth warms, but other species will expand their range to take their place. Global trade has already caused this to happen all over the world, as so-called "invasive species" move into areas they had never inhabited before.
If insect species are actually dropping worldwide, which to me is not yet proven, then it's happening for the same reason other species are dropping -- the direct elimination of habitat by human activity, especially in highly developed areas like Europe.
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@Paul, There was some recently published research that shows a drop in insect populations right along with an increase in the pest kinds like mosquitos. See: https://www.entsoc.org/climate-change-impact-insects-simply-cannot-be-ignored for more.
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@Paul, Why can't you imagine an elimination of habitat by climatic temperature change. Surely, you can see a change from global warming, so why would that change not eliminate habitat?
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