Roadtrips + Insects

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TheCatt
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Roadtrips + Insects

Post by TheCatt »

Remember when you were kids and you'd go on long trips, and there'd be insects smashed all over your windshield and shit?

Why doesn't that happen any more?
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Cakedaddy
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Roadtrips + Insects

Post by Cakedaddy »

Because you don't live where you did when you were a kid.

When I'm back in the area where I grew up and that happened, it still happens. Same thing with lightning bugs (fireflies) for me. I only saw them when I would visit my parents. Although, we moved about 3 years ago, and they are in this neighborhood. You know that feeling you get hearing an old song, or something? That happens every time I see them. I do not get that feeling when my car is covered in dead bugs though.
TheCatt
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Roadtrips + Insects

Post by TheCatt »

Cakedaddy wrote: Because you don't live where you did when you were a kid.
We road-tripped across much of the US last Summer or two summers ago. We have lightning bugs, etc where I live now.

This article says it's not just me: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/ ... sects-gone

Records sound poor, though, cuz apparently no one cared.
Of the scant records that do exist, many come from amateur naturalists, whether butterfly collectors or bird watchers. Now, a new set of long-term data is coming to light, this time from a dedicated group of mostly amateur entomologists who have tracked insect abundance at more than 100 nature reserves in western Europe since the 1980s.

Over that time the group, the Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons, the group—which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades—found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites.
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GORDON
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Roadtrips + Insects

Post by GORDON »

We get swarms of... bugs... in this area. Certain times of year, after a rain. You'll see brown clouds over fields and woods. Then you'll drive through a swarm of them.

Also you could walk across my yard jumping firefly to firefly, and never touch the ground.

But one does wonder about pesticides in the environment.
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Vince
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Roadtrips + Insects

Post by Vince »

Cakedaddy wrote: Because you don't live where you did when you were a kid.

When I'm back in the area where I grew up and that happened, it still happens. Same thing with lightning bugs (fireflies) for me. I only saw them when I would visit my parents. Although, we moved about 3 years ago, and they are in this neighborhood. You know that feeling you get hearing an old song, or something? That happens every time I see them. I do not get that feeling when my car is covered in dead bugs though.
I think this has a lot to do with it. Also, I suspect that the old two lane roads we traveled as kids are replaced with much wider 4 lane interstates where you have little uninhabitable zones for many of them. We have a lot of what appears to be Indiana bats in our area now. The wife and I often try to take the dog for a walk right at dusk to watch them darting in and out of the trees after bugs. They were a rarity around here when I was growing up. Seems like they are fine for food. And we're in a primarily ag area where they heavily spray.
"... and then I was forced to walk the Trail of Tears." - Elizabeth Warren
TheCatt
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Roadtrips + Insects

Post by TheCatt »

TheCatt wrote:
Cakedaddy wrote: Because you don't live where you did when you were a kid.
We road-tripped across much of the US last Summer or two summers ago. We have lightning bugs, etc where I live now.

This article says it's not just me: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/ ... sects-gone

Records sound poor, though, cuz apparently no one cared.[/quote]
Birds also missing?
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Vince
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Roadtrips + Insects

Post by Vince »

I don't know where they are, but we're pretty overrun with birds here. I suspect our methods of counting have improved and we're finding that earlier "estimates" were pretty bad. That's far more likely than this mystical loss of habitat and global warming, etc, etc.
"... and then I was forced to walk the Trail of Tears." - Elizabeth Warren
GORDON
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Post by GORDON »

My area is actually a bird watching Mecca, at certain times a year. We're on a migration path. Local businesses welcoming the birders and stuff.
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Vince
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Roadtrips + Insects

Post by Vince »

Reading more on this article, it looks like their mixing data collection methodologies. I don't know why people thing this is acceptable without loads of peer reviewed studies showing that they can draw consistent data. They do the same thing with global warming comparing tree rings to satellite data. It's junk the way they do it.
"... and then I was forced to walk the Trail of Tears." - Elizabeth Warren
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