30.10.2019 | Beate Kittl / TUM | News WSL
Compared to a decade ago, today the number of insect species on many areas has decreased by about one third. This is the result of a study with participation of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and coordinated by the University of Bern. The loss of species mainly affects grasslands in the vicinity of intensively farmed land – but also applies to forests and protected areas.
Various studies have already demonstrated that there are far fewer creatures chirping, buzzing, creeping and fluttering in German meadows today than 25 years ago. "Previous studies, however, either focused exclusively on biomass, i.e. the total weight of all insects, or on individual species or species groups. The fact that a large part of all insect groups is actually affected has not been clear so far," says Dr. Sebastian Seibold, first author from the Technical University Munich (TUM).
In a very large-scale biodiversity study, an international research team surveyed a large number of insect groups in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Baden-Württemberg between 2008 and 2017. Now the researchers have published their analysis in the scientific journal “nature”.
Insects affected both in grasslands and forests
The researchers collected more than one million insects at 300 sites. They were able to prove that many of the nearly 2700 investigated species are in decline. In recent years, certain rare species could no longer be found in some of the regions studied. Both in forested areas and grasslands, the scientists counted about one third fewer insect species after 10 years.
"Before our survey it was unclear whether and to what extent forests were affected by the insect decline as well," says Seibold. Since 2008 they measured a decrease of approximately 40 percent in insect biomass in the forests they studied. In grasslands the results were even more alarming: at the end of the study period, the insect biomass decreased to only one third of its former level.
"A decline on that scale over a period of just 10 years came as a complete surprise to us – it is frightening, but fits the picture presented in a growing number of studies," says Wolfgang Weisser, professor of Terrestrial Ecology at TUM and a co-initiator of the cooperative project.
The decisive factor: the immediate surroundings
Every type of forest and grassland site studied by the team was affected: sheep pastures, meadows that are mowed and fertilized three to four times per year, forestry dominated coniferous forests and even unused forests in protected areas. The researchers identified the biggest losses in grasslands surrounded by intensively farmed land, where the most heavily impacted species were those unable to travel far.
In the forested areas, by contrast, the hardest-hit insect groups were those that cover long distances. "To decide whether it is a matter of the more mobile forest-dwelling species having more contact with agriculture, or whether it has something to do with living conditions in the forests, further study will be needed," said the WSL researcher Dr. Martin Gossner.
Local standalone initiatives have little prospect of protecting insects
"This result illustrates the great added value of carefully coordinated interdisciplinary long-term research, which allow to document and understand insect shrinkage much more accurately and comprehensively than individual studies," says Markus Fischer, Professor of Plant Ecology at the University of Berne and the main initiator of the research programme.
According to Dr. Seibold, current initiatives to address insect losses are overly concerned with the cultivation of individual plots of land and operate independently of one another for the most part. "To stop the decline, however, our results indicate that more coordination is needed at the regional and national levels."
The study was carried out under a Germany-wide cooperative project, the Biodiversity Exploratories (https://www.biodiversity-exploratories.de). This open research platform is financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and coordinated by Prof. Markus Fischer from the University of Berne. Researchers from and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Jena, Germany), the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL (Birmensdorf, Switzerland), the Universities of Bern (Switzerland), Düzce (Turkey), Salzburg (Austria), as well as the Universities of Darmstadt, Freiburg, Göttingen, Marburg, TU Munich and Würzburg, in Germany were involved.
The scientists in the project are exploring such issues as the possible interactions between different elements of biodiversity – for example between plant and insect diversity. The project is also exploring the effects of different forms of land use on biodiversity and the processes within an ecosystem.
Contact ¶
Links and documents ¶
Original publication:
Seibold, S., Gossner, M.M., Simons, N.K., Blüthgen, N., Müller, J., Ambarli, D., Ammer, C., Bauhus, J., Fischer, M., Habel, J.C., Linsenmair, K.E., Nauss, T., Penone, C., Prati, D., Schall, P., Schulze, E.-D., Vogt, J., Wöllauer, S. und Weisser, W.W. Arthropod decline in grasslands and forests is associated with drivers at landscape level. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1684-3
Links:
- WSL-Seite zu den Biodiversitäts-Exploratorien
Copyright ¶
WSL and SLF provide image and sound material free of charge for use in the context of press contributions in connection with this media release. The transfer of this material to image, sound and/or video databases and the sale of the material by third parties are not permitted.