For The Wild - Dr. DAVID WAGNER on the Ever Indispensable Insect ⧸114

00:00:00.000 This podcast is brought to you through support from our partner, the Calliopeia Foundation.

00:00:05.400 Calliopeia envisions a future grounded in compassion, respect, dignity, reverence for

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00:00:15.680 Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance and Led to Life. To learn more about Calliopeia's mission,

00:00:20.580 visit calliopeia.org. Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.

00:00:30.000 it's these common things that we see on a day-to-day basis and maybe end up as a splat

00:00:37.900 on our windshield that are doing our recycling. They're the ones feeding wildlife. They're the

00:00:43.320 ones providing the pollination services. And so we're having to rethink about what we want to

00:00:49.740 preserve. Today we are speaking with Dr. David Wagner. Dr. Wagner is an entomologist and professor

00:00:59.540 of ecology and evolutionary biology. His research interests are in the biology and evolution of moths

00:01:06.060 and insect conservation. He has published several books on caterpillars. His 2005 guide with

00:01:13.120 Princeton University Press, Caterpillars of Eastern North America, a guide to identification

00:01:19.140 and natural history, is in its ninth printing. Thank you so much, Dr. Wagner, for joining us

00:01:25.800 today. I want to say that, like I had mentioned earlier, we've never had an entire episode

00:01:31.700 dedicated to entomology and insects. And I know this is, in so many ways, a foundational

00:01:40.480 topic to be discussing in terms of Earth's health and threats facing ecosystems. So I

00:01:48.120 really appreciate your work and your dedication to this subject.

00:01:51.640 Yeah, thank you for inviting me. Invertebrates and insects are really what tether together our

00:01:58.200 terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. They're very, very important. And some people can't live

00:02:03.180 with insects, but we know that we can't live without them either. So yeah, they are quintessential

00:02:08.220 to pollination and birds and many of the things we love about nature.

00:02:13.100 Absolutely. And I've read that there are over 1 million known species that inhabit Earth alongside

00:02:19.600 of us. Or if you include species yet to be identified, scientists place a number closer

00:02:25.240 to 8 million. Approximately 80% of them are all insects. Unfortunately, their vast domain has

00:02:34.240 made them equally susceptible to the perils of civilization. In fact, insects are declining

00:02:40.620 almost twice as fast as vertebrates. In the 90s, conversations around declining pollinators took

00:02:47.160 root. And since then, alarms have, you know, been rung about moths, fireflies, and monarch

00:02:53.620 butterflies. But five years ago, a team of biologists calculated that globally in the past

00:02:59.380 35 years, invertebrates such as bees and beetles have decreased by 45%. So Dr. Wagner, perhaps you

00:03:08.640 could start us off by sharing the magic and mystery of insects, as well as what might be some of the

00:03:15.700 driving factors behind the so-called insect apocalypse? Well, just in terms of the magic

00:03:22.020 and mystery, most of us love butterflies, and I think they really enrich our journey and our walks

00:03:27.540 through life, and there are many other beautiful bees and beetles and all kinds of little things

00:03:35.200 that are running the world for us, providing ecosystem services that aesthetically I think

00:03:40.220 they're great and certainly make life more interesting. In terms of the biomass in a tropical

00:03:46.420 forest, we all want to go to a tropical forest if we love nature at some point in our lives.

00:03:50.700 It sounds good to go to New Guinea or the Amazon, but most of the biomass, if you put all the

00:03:57.740 animals, all the insects and birds and monkeys and things that we could find on scales, we would

00:04:06.020 find out that the insects greatly outweigh all of the bird life and many of the mammals and what

00:04:13.840 have you in that forest. And it's really a surprise to people to see how important insects really are.

00:04:18.800 And they provide so many services for us. I mean, we wouldn't even have wildflowers if it weren't

00:04:23.080 for bees to carry out these pollination services. And that's a lot of the crops, especially the

00:04:28.820 fruits and seed, not crops that we have, but we need them for alfalfa, forage, and all kinds of

00:04:34.460 other aspects. I can't imagine what the food shortages would be like if we didn't have

00:04:40.340 insect pollinators. And they provide all kinds of other services for us. They're very, very

00:04:46.060 important in terms of nutrient cycling, getting rid of the dung, getting rid of fallen leaves,

00:04:51.240 getting rid of fallen wood, and that sort of thing. So very, very important in terms of being

00:04:55.080 nature's recyclers. They provide biological control. Bugs eat other bugs. And so we would

00:05:00.420 actually have to have more pesticides on our foods if we didn't have bugs, these predacious 0.97

00:05:05.760 bugs that eat bad bugs like aphids and the like. We all know that ladybugs, for example, 1.00

00:05:10.860 eat a tremendous number of aphids and dragonflies around to eat mosquitoes, which carry so many

00:05:16.700 medically important diseases. So we absolutely depend on insects. They're very, very important.

00:05:21.980 And I already touched on this before, but we really need insects just to feed all the animal

00:05:27.880 life that we really appreciate on this this planet i think without insects in our forest

00:05:32.700 in our gardens we would have very few birds in our yards and certainly spring would be very silent

00:05:38.960 songbirds in particular are dependent on insects thank you for sharing a bit about this to begin

00:05:46.760 with and i'm very troubled hearing about oh yeah please well i was going to say i didn't get a

00:05:54.160 chance to actually get into some of the drivers that are behind the declines. And so at this

00:05:59.680 point, I'm afraid it's death by a thousand cuts or there's many different drivers. But

00:06:04.100 one of the major ones that we're thinking about now is agricultural intensification. And

00:06:10.100 in the past, farms, family farms were small. There was hedgerows. There was pastures with

00:06:16.620 wildflowers, wet meadows, hedges, and many different places, habitats for wildlife and

00:06:24.820 plant life to live.

00:06:26.840 And since about the 1950s, but certainly since the Green Revolution, we've been seeing the

00:06:33.820 closure, the abandonment of small farms, and we now have mega farms, huge monocultures,

00:06:40.440 often genetically modified, with lots of fertilizer input, herbicide input, pesticide input. So it's

00:06:49.040 a very different kind of agriculture that we're practicing now. And it's become very nature

00:06:54.060 unfriendly. And I think that that is a big part of the decline that we're seeing. But of course,

00:07:00.080 when we talk about the loss of biodiversity anywhere on the planet, whether it's plant life

00:07:04.800 or bears and birds or insects, oftentimes the number one cause is habitat destruction where

00:07:15.100 we're taking this habitat and either converting it into residential or commercial developments

00:07:22.200 or the deforestation that might be happening in the tropics with much of that deforestation

00:07:27.000 actually being tied back to agriculture again. So habitat destruction and agricultural

00:07:32.080 intensification are enormous causes, I think, in these declines. But we also have things like light

00:07:38.060 pollution, nitrification from the burning of fossil fuels. And the one looking forward, if we

00:07:44.040 could get our crystal balls out and look forward into the future, I think climate change is going

00:07:49.440 to have a steadily increasing role. It's not so much that global warming, the way people think

00:07:55.500 about climate change. I'm afraid that the actual damage from climate change is going to be driven

00:08:02.960 by the great variation that climate change is causing. We're seeing storms, much bigger storms.

00:08:10.020 We're seeing more droughts, and the droughts could be deal changers. More frequent droughts,

00:08:15.640 more severe droughts, and these, especially with higher temperatures, are going to be devastating

00:08:20.920 for things like insects. They have so much surface area, not so much volume. So they're very

00:08:26.280 susceptible to drying conditions. So there's all these things that happen with climate change that

00:08:31.820 we don't think about very often that I think are perhaps even more important. So the indirect

00:08:37.140 effects of just increasing the global temperature by one or two degrees centigrade will mean we'll

00:08:42.860 have many more droughts that are changing plant distributions, all the fires. The American West

00:08:50.180 had over 100 fires burning at one time last year. There was a fire burning in essentially every

00:08:54.620 state and lower Canadian province. These kinds of things are deal breakers for all kinds of

00:09:00.220 biodiversity across the planet. And so I think that climate change is the number one enemy of

00:09:06.040 biodiversity and life as we know it on this planet and even food security. Yes, we've had

00:09:12.100 many in-depth conversations with different scientists and indigenous leaders around

00:09:19.160 the effects of climate change. And it's huge to imagine all of the changes, so many of these

00:09:28.400 changes that we, one, don't recognize, and many of them that we don't even see because we're not

00:09:34.940 privy to what we're losing. And I was reading that the disappearance of insects has been described

00:09:42.280 as a possible, quote, bottom-up trophic cascade. And a 2013 paper in Nature argued that a loss of

00:09:50.860 only 30% of species abundance can be so destabilizing to the ecosystem that it will cause

00:09:57.220 a second species extinction. In fact, it found that 80% of the time is the secondarily impacted

00:10:04.320 species that goes extinct first. So I'm wondering if you could elaborate further on the implications

00:10:09.740 of insect loss on creatures like salmon, nightingales, and earthworms. Are we coming to a

00:10:15.980 point where scientists are not only seeing other species suffering from habitat loss,

00:10:21.120 but from starvation as well? Well, what you're getting at is sort of a different sort of problem

00:10:28.900 than many of us have been looking at for the last two or three decades. It seems like when you think

00:10:34.240 about conservation, or you hear about environmental activism, it's often focused on rare and

00:10:40.320 endangered species. And I think these recent reports are causing us to think about the world

00:10:46.160 and the threats and the problems really differently. And it's maybe not so much about

00:10:51.620 the rare and endangered species that we should be worried about on a day-by-day basis, but it's

00:10:57.120 these really abundant things like earthworms and small beetles and springtails and things we don't

00:11:04.920 even think about because they're so common but it's these really abundant things in nature that

00:11:11.520 all the species tend to eat or are fed upon by them and so if you want to think about a food web

00:11:18.300 the things that are most important in that food web are the ones that are most common

00:11:22.580 that account for the most energy in the ecosystem and so we're starting to see declines like the

00:11:29.280 ones you spoke of of the declines of common species and that is frightening because you get

00:11:34.600 these cascading effects or ripple phenomena that move through the ecosystem and and disrupt that

00:11:41.920 food web and break these linkages break the pollination services of this plant or that

00:11:47.180 So they're very frightening and will have consequences upwards and downwards.

00:11:52.720 So they will percolate or cascade up to bird life.

00:11:58.020 We've already talked about the importance of insects to songbirds.

00:12:01.540 We're seeing major declines of some insectivorous vertebrates.

00:12:05.540 We're seeing declines of swallows, night jars, and other species of birds that eat primarily insects.

00:12:15.320 We don't really know if this is insect decline that's driving it.

00:12:19.280 We just know that there's a correlation.

00:12:21.220 And it's very important in our conversation today to distinguish causation from correlation.

00:12:26.660 So they're not the same.

00:12:28.100 We have a correlation that many insectivorous birds are having a rough time, but we don't

00:12:33.340 actually know the cause of that.

00:12:35.220 But we need to collect data.

00:12:37.740 So that's the most important thing that can come out of our discussion, our conversation

00:12:42.580 today is that entomologists, biologists, conservation biologists, policymakers don't

00:12:48.060 really have the data on insects that we want and we need so we can identify what these

00:12:54.320 causal factors are that you asked me about.

00:12:56.740 We don't know to what extent it's agriculture, agriculture intensification, or maybe a new

00:13:03.020 pesticide such as neonicotinoids, to what extent it is drought, and what have you.

00:13:08.960 So we need more data and more long-term studies.

00:13:12.580 Mm hmm. This question around data is something that I've thought with for a while, because on one hand, I understand that scientific data is extremely important so that we can take those reports to policymakers, government officials, large, you know, farm owners, corporations, etc., and be able to point directly to scientific reports.

00:13:40.820 On the other hand, you know, I've spoken to many indigenous leaders and indigenous ecologists, and there's also this part of me that says, don't we know things? Can't we see things without having to spend more and more time collecting data just to prove that toxins, light pollution, insecticides, I mean, of course, it seems obvious that insecticides would be having a major impact on insects.

00:14:08.100 You know, we're spraying something that's killing insects over thousands, if not millions

00:14:13.080 of acres across this country.

00:14:14.860 So I have this battle within my own mind of not that I don't think that we need data,

00:14:21.600 but how much data do we actually need to prove what seems in some ways obvious?

00:14:27.760 Well, I guess it depends on the question.

00:14:29.880 And so I think about that a lot.

00:14:32.740 I especially think about this in terms of climate change.

00:14:35.740 do we need to take out our thermometers and measure that the mean temperature of where I live

00:14:41.640 or California is one degree or one and a half degree centigrade warmer. I think we all have

00:14:47.840 enough data about climate change to know we have to keep fossil fuels in the ground. So I think

00:14:52.200 that's an urgent message. And I think scientists should be more actively involved in activism

00:14:57.840 and bringing about change. And we don't need necessarily to measure that or to predict.

00:15:04.420 We know from our models, we know what happens when we put gigatons of carbon that was in the

00:15:10.580 ground and put it into the atmosphere. Just based on first principles, that's going to have an

00:15:15.400 impact. There are other things, though, for example, this insect decline phenomenon, we don't

00:15:20.360 really know what the causal factors are. And I think it's very important there that we

00:15:24.700 disambiguate between pesticides. I mean, you talk about pesticides, but we don't really know it's

00:15:31.820 pesticides in the sense that pesticides are a proxy for this agricultural intensification we're

00:15:38.760 talking about. When we go from small farms to large mega farms, there's a lot of things that

00:15:44.840 change and not just pesticide or at least not just insecticide usage. There's also these

00:15:50.520 roundup ready crops. There's cosmetic changes where we want large tracts of land to look clean

00:15:57.420 and free of weeds, I mean, that could be the insect decline problem. We have a single monoculture,

00:16:03.180 whereas before we had many different weeds and other plants and nectar sources growing along

00:16:08.900 these fields. But I think in the case of insecticides in particular, I think it is important

00:16:13.940 that we identify what it is about agricultural intensification. Is it the scale? Is it the

00:16:21.100 herbicides that we're spraying on these crops to remove weeds? Is it the insecticides like

00:16:26.480 neonicotinoids? Is it the fact that it's just a giant, huge monoculture, that farming is on a

00:16:33.120 different scale? I think it's really important that we tease that apart, disambiguate what the

00:16:39.340 causal factor is, because there are a lot of things that are correlated with pesticide usage

00:16:44.680 that may not be pesticides. And sometimes the alternatives, let's say we legislate against

00:16:51.040 neonicotinoids, because we think there's a correlation, and that's not necessarily causative,

00:16:57.260 then we might have to use another kind of pesticide that causes more human cancers. So I think science

00:17:04.040 and truth and knowledge is imperative. And that's our responsibility and our charge as scientists.

00:17:09.840 But I fully agree with you. When we have a clear problem, like climate change, that it's incumbent

00:17:15.680 on scientists to do more, to spread that message, and maybe not try to measure so much with their

00:17:21.840 thermometer, but to get out there and do something. In terms of the neonicotinoids that you've been

00:17:28.320 speaking about, I've read that they're referred to as our generation's iteration of DDT. And they

00:17:34.760 have been banned and people have been doing things about them. They've been banned in Italy, Germany,

00:17:39.500 France and Slovenia and are largely held responsible for declining bee populations

00:17:44.660 and it's incredible because they're still somehow one of the most popular insecticides on the market

00:17:49.820 especially in this country. I'd also read a scientific review on insect decline and the

00:17:56.680 scientists wrote that a comprehensive reduction in pesticide use could prevent the extinction of

00:18:00.820 over 40 percent of the world's insect population. So I'm wondering let's say so much of this

00:18:08.800 agricultural farmland was converted back to small scale, diverse family farms and really

00:18:16.560 taken a whole different approach to the way in which we produce the world's or the country's

00:18:23.420 food. Do you think that that would create a change? And of course, I do believe it would,

00:18:30.420 but how long do you think it would take for surrounding ecosystems and insects to emerge

00:18:34.460 again? Well, there's a lot in your question. First off, I think the data on neonicotinoids

00:18:41.420 is quite contentious. And so we're not certain that the legislation didn't get out in front of

00:18:47.560 the science. There hasn't been enough replicated studies to understand what the effects of

00:18:53.900 neonicotinoids are to insects at this point, especially sublethal effects. So when we spray

00:19:00.680 a pesticide, everybody thinks about that bugs die. But in many cases, at low doses, the bugs

00:19:07.920 don't necessarily die, but these could have immune consequences, orientation consequences,

00:19:14.580 what we call sublethal effects. And those kinds of effects are very hard to study because they may

00:19:21.220 only slightly compromise an individual. But that's how evolution works, that over time,

00:19:26.920 those slightly compromised individuals leave less offspring, and so there could be a great

00:19:31.600 consequence. But in any case, when we don't use neonicotinoids, agriculture is likely to use

00:19:38.820 other pesticides, and that's really the problem. It's an area of research that it's not my

00:19:45.260 expertise. I do know that there is quite a bit of literature that's having trouble disambiguating

00:19:52.660 the role of neonicotinoids, again, because most of these studies have been done in the laboratory

00:19:58.120 or they've been correlative, and they haven't shown direct causes of some of these pesticides

00:20:03.700 in nature. So that's a frontier where we need more funding and especially more field studies

00:20:09.900 and experimental work, but in situ, out in the fields, especially what their impacts are

00:20:15.660 in low doses away from the agricultural fields. That's, I think, where we need it.

00:20:19.940 I can tell you that there are places in Europe and elsewhere where neonicotinoids are used and where they've had restoration programs for a special butterfly or rare species.

00:20:30.360 The butterflies recovered fine once they brought about habitat changes.

00:20:34.520 So it's not an easy – it's not as easy as we would like it to be in terms of knowing what to do.

00:20:41.800 in terms of agriculture, you know, we have a growing human population and we have to feed

00:20:47.660 all the people of the world. As much as I believe agriculture and agriculture intensification is the

00:20:54.480 problem, I also recognize that it's necessary. And so I just think we need to figure out ways

00:21:00.380 to make it more nature friendly. And I don't know that we could ever go back to small scale farms.

00:21:05.760 I hope we go back to some organic farms and some smaller farms that this becomes

00:21:10.520 living closer to the land and having some of our produce come from smaller farms, I think that

00:21:17.060 would be awesome. But on the other hand, I think we also have to be realistic and just find ways

00:21:23.320 to make these larger farms more nature-friendly. Leave some water bodies, some wetlands that are

00:21:30.540 unmanaged, allow more weeds, hedgerows, some small wetland areas that serve as wet meadows that

00:21:37.420 you know, could be nectaring stations for migratory species like the monarch when they

00:21:41.700 move, you know, from Mexico all the way north into the Great Lakes states or something like

00:21:47.380 that.

00:21:47.580 So there's a lot we can do.

00:21:49.420 And certainly we could look to find pesticides and herbicides that are used either in lower

00:21:56.040 amounts or have minor or diminished non-target impacts to some of the species that are outside

00:22:03.940 to that agricultural field therein bordering wildlands, say.

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00:22:33.940 Love, love, love

00:22:44.940 Have I told you about love?

00:23:03.940 The ground below, everything that grows, the sky up above, alone, made of love.

00:23:28.060 The heart inside your body

00:23:34.060 As much as we've been talking about industrial agriculture,

00:23:45.700 some of the most prominent research around insect decline

00:23:48.960 comes from nature preserves in places like Germany, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico,

00:23:53.480 which I was really surprised about.

00:23:55.360 For example, a study last year showed a 76% decrease in flying insects over the past few

00:24:01.880 decades in German preserves. It's especially frightening to think that we're seeing such

00:24:07.160 extreme insect loss, not in urban infrastructure-heavy areas, but in preserves that should

00:24:14.040 ideally be a safe haven for many species. So I'm wondering what exactly does this signify

00:24:19.840 if we're seeing a loss of insect populations in areas where there is little pesticide use

00:24:24.940 or habitat loss, does that mean that climate change is the driving force? Or is it possible

00:24:30.220 that insects are showing global susceptibility to an accumulation of toxins? I think we can

00:24:36.260 eliminate the last. We're not seeing a signal of global insect decline at this point. There's

00:24:42.120 nothing that I've read or found. I'm reviewing this now for the interview of entomology. So

00:24:49.080 we are seeing insect decline. It's usually in areas of high human occupation, urbanization,

00:24:53.820 residential areas and we're also seeing in areas of agriculture intensification. I am quite worried

00:25:01.880 about the phenomenon that you mentioned though where we're getting decline inside reserves. I

00:25:06.760 think the Germans have the best data. Their Krefeld Entomological Society looked at 63 sites

00:25:13.380 and they've been looking at them for over 100 years in certain places. So they have a tremendous

00:25:17.980 amount of data that can be brought to bear on this issue. And I've been in contact with one of

00:25:23.560 their lead scientist, Martin Sorg. And he tells me that in at least 61 or 62 of those reserves,

00:25:31.300 they're adjacent to agricultural land. And in certain cases, actually surrounded by agricultural

00:25:36.980 land. They have one site that I believe is situated more towards the mountains or in

00:25:44.120 the foothills of the mountains. And that site has not shown much insect decline.

00:25:49.380 So this is still unpublished work. But it does suggest that these declines are not global. They're not ubiquitous. We don't necessarily know what all the causal factors are. But again, I think we're seeing them primarily in areas of high human occupation or high human activity.

00:26:09.360 You did bring up the tropics, and that probably is directly linked to climate change, and I'm quite worried about that, especially when you have wet tropical forests that were bathed in clouds or receiving rains almost every day.

00:26:24.260 Now, with these warmer temperatures, the clouds are being driven up the mountains or off the top of volcanoes, and we are starting to see some very serious consequences from those kinds of changes where we have a wet forest or one that was historically wet and now is drying out.

00:26:41.200 And there's a new paper that will be out, I imagine, in the next issue or very, very soon in Biological Conservation by Dan Jansen, talking about just this, what you brought up, the drying out and climate changes that are happening in some of the tropical forests.

00:26:58.940 His report is going to be what he's seen in Costa Rica over the last 40 years, and it won't make you happy.

00:27:03.560 It's quite frightening and upsetting.

00:27:05.980 Now, similarly to many other species, insects can only handle certain climate thresholds

00:27:12.440 before their internal systems cease regulation.

00:27:16.280 And I'm wondering, are there any insects that will be unfazed by global warming?

00:27:20.380 And what about a higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere?

00:27:24.480 Do they pose a different set of risks to insects' internal systems?

00:27:29.480 Well, in terms of temperature, I think I'm not that worried about it.

00:27:33.140 Insects are cold-blooded animals.

00:27:34.580 that see wild swings in their temperatures on a daily basis, and this is particularly true of

00:27:39.620 temperate insects or insects from deserts, where they might see a 70 degree swing in temperature

00:27:44.960 just in their own bodies over the course of 24 hours between day and night. Mountain species as

00:27:50.200 well would see tremendous fluctuations in their temperature. Now, that's not always true. There

00:27:55.940 are going to be organisms that live in very, very stable areas, like a tropical rainforest

00:28:01.360 differs very little between night and day, and essentially has no seasonal variation if they're

00:28:07.860 on the equator, right? So you only have seasonal forests when you're away from the equator.

00:28:12.220 So those insects might be really susceptible to temperature fluctuations, but the insects of the

00:28:17.440 temperate zone see wild, wild changes and fluctuations in temperature. So I'm not so

00:28:21.520 worried about those, but I think we're back to climate change and back to water because insects,

00:28:27.740 if you think about it, are all surface area and almost no volume. And so their potential

00:28:33.520 to dry out very quickly, even flying just a few hundred meters, is staggering, particularly if

00:28:40.780 they've lived in areas or forests that have been wet historically. So I think these higher

00:28:45.820 temperatures with climate change are going to pose a real challenge for these animals,

00:28:51.500 especially places where, again, where we see drying conditions or we see extended droughts

00:28:57.100 or more severe droughts, or more frequent droughts. And not only are they going to have

00:29:02.360 direct effects on these animals, but all the indirect effects. When you start drawing out

00:29:07.340 ecosystems, you change the plants, you stress the plants, you end up with these conifers or

00:29:13.380 pine trees across the West. Because they're subject to drought conditions, they're not as

00:29:18.700 healthy as they were maybe three decades ago. And now they're becoming more susceptible to

00:29:24.140 bark beetles and other insect pests. So there's going to be all kinds of indirect effects that

00:29:29.680 increase fires and what have you that accompany climate change.

00:29:34.840 I have heard that many entomologists have acknowledged that while they are noticing

00:29:41.060 staggering decline, to the unrestrained eye, it's hard to detect that anything is amiss for most

00:29:46.600 people. Coupled with the reality that so many people have a mentality of immediate extermination

00:29:52.900 when it comes to insects, I can't help but wonder, how have cultural narratives and attitudes around

00:29:59.160 insects contribute to the invisibility of the insect apocalypse? Well, there's certain cultures

00:30:06.780 that don't appreciate insects at all, and there's other cultures, Chinese cultures, that keep

00:30:11.320 crickets and have sort of a passion and appreciation for insects. Many Asian countries

00:30:16.900 appreciate insects for their beauty. They're often kept as pets. Kids fly dragonflies around on

00:30:23.960 strings. And it's very popular to keep giant beetles as a pet in the way an American might

00:30:30.740 keep a chameleon or a knoll or a fish. Different cultures around the world eat insects and

00:30:36.760 appreciate them for those reasons. And people may be eating insects as well. We can get to that

00:30:42.640 later in the show, but they certainly are much lower on the food chain and much better for the

00:30:48.060 planet and a very rich place to get protein, save a lot of water and a lot of energy by eating more

00:30:52.980 insects. And they're even starting to show up in protein bars and the like. But at least in North

00:30:57.520 America, insects are not especially loved. And so there are people that still go out of their way

00:31:02.640 to step on them. So that is sort of a cultural thing that happens here. In Europe, there's much

00:31:08.620 more appreciation for insects. I don't know why that is, but many lawyers and gentry and doctors 0.99

00:31:14.660 collect insects or at least study insects or photograph them, know them by name and the like.

00:31:20.320 So it's often been a pastime for white collar people and royalty, you know, Miriam Rothschild

00:31:28.280 and others, even military oftentimes are interested or do a little bit of entomology

00:31:35.140 and backyard naturalism and getting involved, getting closer to nature.

00:31:40.520 So I think over in Europe, they're actually quite concerned about this loss of insect diversity

00:31:46.320 and loss of insect abundance.

00:31:48.540 And perhaps that's why it was really recognized there first,

00:31:52.400 because there's so many people collecting data,

00:31:54.600 so many citizen scientists that appreciate these animals and photograph them

00:31:59.680 and are interested in their life histories and what makes them tick

00:32:03.320 and how we can serve them in the like.

00:32:05.520 And you brought up one point that's really important,

00:32:08.260 and that is that the decline is slow but fast,

00:32:11.040 and it depends on what time scale we're talking about in the human lifespan.

00:32:16.120 But you're talking about a decline, and it's only 1% or 2% a year,

00:32:21.900 and that doesn't seem like very much, 1% or 2% loss of abundance per year,

00:32:26.180 but that's a loss of 10% of biomass in a single decade.

00:32:30.160 And so you can't run that forward very many decades before you have ecosystem collapse and you have birds going extinct, wildflowers without pollinators.

00:32:40.360 In an evolutionary sense, that's an exceptionally fast rate and very frightening and why a lot of scientists and policymakers and people are paying attention to what's going on.

00:32:50.800 But over the course of a human lifetime, what you've seen, the number of splats, bug splats on your windshield, it's barely detectable, but it's very serious rate.

00:33:01.980 Well, it's interesting because I was just thinking about the whole windshield phenomenon because I do remember seeing a lot more bugs when I would drive through places with my family growing up.

00:33:15.800 You know, we get out of the car from a road trip and our car would just be smashed with so many different varieties.

00:33:23.780 And I've heard from many people that they are feeling a decline in insects, even whether it's in their backyard, like I said, on this windshield phenomenon.

00:33:35.840 So, yeah, I feel both and I feel this kind of invisibility around insect extinction.

00:33:43.400 but then when I really think about it I do notice a lot less even of things that we may consider to

00:33:49.600 be more common in sex. Oh for sure and so we don't have much data but just about any old timer

00:33:56.740 anybody who's lived for 30 years, three decades or four decades they've seen a change or they feel

00:34:02.780 like they've seen a change and I think most have but part of that is also it's a difficult situation

00:34:08.840 because a lot of that sort of wrapped up in urbanization and more people. So a really,

00:34:13.880 really important piece of that would be to find out how the land around where you used to take

00:34:18.460 those drives has changed in four decades. Has it reverted from open meadows and pastures and

00:34:24.020 small farms to forest, which would have perhaps fewer bugs? Or have there been more residential

00:34:31.520 developments and houses in that general area? Because if that's the case, those each have an

00:34:37.480 effect. I mean, many people use pesticides on their lawns. Anyone who leaves a porch light on

00:34:42.300 or a street light becomes a feeding station for bats at night. Every single light left on at night

00:34:47.360 becomes a feeding station for bats at night and for birds in the morning. So it's not an easy

00:34:52.660 problem and we really need data. In the past couple of years, we've seen more and more information

00:34:59.220 disseminate around the fate of monarch butterflies. Over the last two decades, monarch populations in

00:35:05.180 the western part of the country have declined by over 90%, and in March 2018, Mexican officials

00:35:11.940 concluded populations had declined for the second consecutive year. Yet the monarch is not considered

00:35:18.240 an endangered species, and as I understand it, it's thriving in some areas. What is however

00:35:24.640 endangered is the biological phenomenon of their North American migration? Can you talk about the

00:35:30.060 significance of losing biological phenomena, a topic when it seems to be completely left out

00:35:35.760 of conversations around extinction. Well, I think that's right. We don't have that many things that

00:35:41.460 we really consider a biological phenomenon, but the monarch is certainly one. And apparently,

00:35:46.440 for anybody that's ever been to these overwintering aggregations in Mexico, it's life-changing. It's

00:35:53.300 just impossible to imagine billions and billions of butterflies and how beautiful and magic that

00:36:01.640 experience can be for anyone from five years old to 85. It's truly extraordinary. And not all

00:36:11.300 monarchs are migratory. So we have monarchs that stay year round in California. And so that's a

00:36:16.540 very short migration. And we have monarchs in Costa Rica that might just move between dry and

00:36:21.060 wet forest or farther up and farther down a mountain. And that happens throughout South

00:36:25.060 America. What's really special about what's going on in North America is these huge migrations of

00:36:32.220 millions and millions, in some cases, billions of butterflies that are coming down to these

00:36:37.760 furs in central Mexico. And it's truly extraordinary. And we want to protect

00:36:43.740 things like this that are really unusual on the planet. So the butterfly itself is not

00:36:49.940 endangered. It actually has non-migratory populations in many parts of Central America

00:36:54.880 and South America and actually elsewhere on the globe. So what's really special is the fact that

00:37:00.360 these butterflies are able to migrate 2,000 miles. We don't have anything else like it. So I don't

00:37:07.060 know how many species of insects are in the new world, but let's just say there's 7 million species

00:37:12.980 of insects on the planet and at least half of those maybe four million are in the new world

00:37:19.960 because of the amazon and that's the most biodiverse place on the planet that's where

00:37:24.480 we have the most monkeys and the most most insects and the most plants and orchids and what have you

00:37:29.640 so of all of those i mean there's nothing comparable so out of out of four million the

00:37:34.720 monarch is is really special and worth preserving and it's going to need our help this is a they're

00:37:42.000 very susceptible to practices, both in and around the overwintering furs. They have these special

00:37:50.820 furs that are in the high mountains, not that far from Mexico City, actually, and they serve

00:37:56.340 as giant refrigerators. So basically, these millions and millions and millions of monarchs

00:38:02.160 come together, they find these fir trees, and they all huddle up together in unimaginable numbers.

00:38:09.480 and they they have this biological refrigerator it can't get too warm or they end up getting too

00:38:15.980 thirsty and starving to death and it can't get too cold or they freeze and we've probably all

00:38:20.360 seen pictures of tens of thousands of frozen monarchs and and again this is where climate

00:38:25.820 change is going to perhaps threaten that phenomenon but they also need help on their way north and

00:38:32.720 their their giant migration on the way south but it's it's a it's a fabulous story and i can't tell

00:38:38.600 you how many people enjoy having monarchs and how many kids go out and look for monarch caterpillars

00:38:43.500 in their yard and how many children learn about metamorphosis and development and maybe use that

00:38:49.840 as an allegory or a metaphor of their their own development and how as a child are gonna you know

00:38:56.160 it's going to be cinderella it's a phoenix from the flame it's going to be a second opportunity

00:39:00.460 it's going to be about maturation and flying off so we we really want to keep this butterfly around

00:39:06.360 There's nothing else like it. And it's certainly a magnificent animal and really is sort of an ambassador, a poster child for for all invertebrates or for all insects.

00:39:16.140 And and so it's a good banner. It's a good cause. And indeed, really special.

00:39:21.940 Absolutely. I couldn't agree more that the monarch is this ambassador.

00:39:26.820 And it's it really brings people into interest and engagement with insect populations.

00:39:33.900 And so thank you for speaking about that. Now on the topic of extinction and what does and does not

00:39:41.960 get recognized, it's been brought to my attention in doing the research for this interview just how

00:39:47.520 much we have become reliant on extinction as a metric. So do you see any problems with this sort

00:39:54.640 of hyper attention around extinction? Are we falling into this trap of only caring about

00:40:00.020 one set of species at a time once they tip towards extinction rather than focusing our energy and

00:40:05.800 acknowledging the tremendous value of our more common kin that we're upholding ecosystems without

00:40:12.580 any recognition and if this is something that you spoke to at the beginning of the interview

00:40:16.720 just around people focusing just solely on the kind of charismatic large extinct mammals

00:40:23.900 Yeah, so by the time an insect gets very, very rare and might be put on one of our lists as a threatened or an endangered species, or even by the time it's on just a watch list, it's probably so ecologically diminished that it's not likely to be important in terms of the fates of other animals.

00:40:44.380 There's probably not going to be too many other species that would go extinct.

00:40:49.440 You could call it co-extinction once we have an organism that's really rare.

00:40:54.460 Again, this phenomenon, this insect loss, insect decline phenomenon, I think we're worried about it because it's actually the decline of the common species and the ones that are providing the ecosystem services.

00:41:06.140 Things like a honeybee, it would be an extraordinary example in the sense that it's hyper abundant and we can see it on any walk.

00:41:15.260 We can plant a butterfly garden and plan to see honeybees in our yard, but we absolutely depend on them for billions of dollars worth of pollination services.

00:41:26.220 It's these common things that we see on a day-to-day basis and maybe end up as a splat on our windshield that are doing our recycling.

00:41:34.340 They're the ones feeding wildlife. They're the ones providing the pollination services.

00:41:39.440 And so we're having to rethink about what we want to preserve. And I think with invertebrates,

00:41:46.100 first and foremost, we want to understand what the causal factors are. We have to understand

00:41:51.100 if this is climate change or is it an insecticide? Is it light pollution? Is it just carving up the

00:41:58.100 landscape with residences and living with 300 people per square kilometer, we need to know the

00:42:05.220 answer to that in order to protect these things. But I think with invertebrates, there's so many

00:42:11.060 different species. I would think the average eastern state might have 25,000 species of

00:42:18.220 insects. We can't protect every single one of those. I mean, there's not enough knowledge or

00:42:23.620 conservation dollars to do it. So we have to start thinking about habitat preservation

00:42:28.060 and trying to eliminate what might be the primary causal factors. And for example,

00:42:34.540 you've brought up climate change and other guests on your show have brought up climate change. We

00:42:40.060 need to know how important that is in the temperate zone. And is it different in the temperate zone

00:42:45.380 than the tropics? And is it different in the Arctic? We expect to see really big changes

00:42:52.060 in Arctic ecosystems with climate change.

00:42:54.980 We're already seeing them.

00:42:56.000 And in fact, we're actually seeing some insect loss

00:42:57.980 in places away from any humans in Arctic areas.

00:43:03.020 So we need this data.

00:43:22.060 Thank you.

00:43:52.060 You can't fight darkness with darkness

00:43:58.060 You think you can

00:44:02.060 But it's a treat

00:44:06.060 So don't fall for me

00:44:22.060 I met with the queen of the far wings

00:44:36.040 And bowed to her grace

00:44:40.860 She cleaned me with light and opened her gaze

00:44:45.760 Earlier this week, attorneys for the National Butterfly Center filed a restraining order

00:44:53.020 against federal construction of the border wall, which would disturb a butterfly refuge.

00:44:58.340 And for many years, the United States has passed treaties protecting migratory birds,

00:45:03.800 but that protection has never been extended to butterflies, bees, and other pollinators.

00:45:09.760 So do you see importance in pursuing these avenues and granting treaty protections to

00:45:14.600 entire classes of species that have otherwise been neglected under a capitalist system that

00:45:19.500 really only places value on what is immediately necessary for the well-being of humans.

00:45:25.720 Well, I think it would be necessary for the people in Texas to actually show that

00:45:30.080 the insects couldn't move because of the wall. I don't know that we have that data. I haven't

00:45:35.100 seen any papers on that, but I do know that the wall does impede the movement of wildlife,

00:45:40.320 particularly vertebrates. So I think at least mammals are highly compromised by something like

00:45:45.920 that, where they can't move along the Rio Grande River. And I know that there's even some species

00:45:50.200 of cats, you know, the margays and what have you, where this is a real issue. I don't know to what

00:45:56.460 extent butterflies would have any trouble crossing a wall, but I don't know that we have data. So

00:46:01.580 I can't really speak to that. Yeah, it seems like it's still very much in a development phase of

00:46:09.380 research. But it's something to consider. Every development project, infrastructure project,

00:46:16.260 resource extraction project will inevitably affect insects. You know, we can't get around that. I was

00:46:23.540 even reading for as good intention as windmills are to create renewable energy, they're having

00:46:29.200 a large impact on migratory birds. So, you know, we really have to be thoughtful when we are doing

00:46:34.820 more and more human development that each of these projects will inevitably have some effect

00:46:41.000 on these creatures. It's hard to do anything in nature without having winners and losers and

00:46:46.840 what we don't want to end up with is a very diminished future with a bunch of generalist

00:46:52.780 and weedy species and all of our specialists have tanked and some of the things some of the

00:46:59.740 creatures that we really love many of the butterflies for example that are special and

00:47:04.280 unique, losing those and getting just a bunch of weedy garden species that thrive with human

00:47:11.600 habitation. Robins and starlings are going to be fine as long as people are around, but that's not

00:47:16.600 necessarily how we want to measure. It's not what we want to leave for our children and our

00:47:22.640 children's children as part of our legacy. No, absolutely not. I'm sure at this point of the

00:47:28.200 conversation, thinking about the legacy and what we want to leave behind, many of our listeners

00:47:33.300 are wondering what actions can be taken in response to mass insect decline. You know,

00:47:39.540 what is the feasibility of starving off decline through individual actions, like considering more

00:47:45.180 nature-friendly landscaping and garden practices? Or what other actionable items must we pursue to

00:47:51.720 do something? Well, I think the most important thing, probably on a global basis, is to work

00:47:58.100 for clean energy, whatever that would be. We pretty much have to keep carbon in the ground.

00:48:02.420 We need to fund it. We need to encourage our local communities to find ways to get clean energy.

00:48:08.540 We can influence the legislators in our state to look for clean energy.

00:48:13.440 We can divest from carbon-based fuels.

00:48:15.580 I mean, that's the obvious thing and probably the most urgent thing, and we'll save the greatest number of species,

00:48:20.700 if we were worried about posterity and our children's children's children and what kind of planet we want to give to our offspring.

00:48:28.100 But there's lots of things we can do.

00:48:29.840 you brought up a really good one, and that is the kinds of decisions we make in terms of just how we

00:48:34.660 landscape our yard. You know, how much grass do we want and how much pesticide do we want to use

00:48:39.320 on that? And would we accept a few weeds? But one of the main ones that I think is really fun to

00:48:44.200 think about would be just the decisions on what kind of plants we get at the greenhouses and where

00:48:49.660 we buy those plants. Certainly ornamental plants from another nation are not going to support any 0.98

00:48:55.560 caterpillars or maybe maybe 10 percent of the caterpillars that would be found on a native

00:49:00.160 species of plant that had the same architecture the same number of leaves and so we really want

00:49:06.200 to plant natives if we want caterpillars and you got to have caterpillars if you want birds

00:49:10.220 these people go to the nursery and buy ornamental plants from japan and all these horticultural

00:49:15.460 varieties might as well be putting signs up in their yard birds are not welcome here and i think

00:49:20.960 that um how we how we think about landscaping in cities and in in our residential areas is really

00:49:27.820 really important and i think pollinator gardens are just freaking awesome i mean they're really

00:49:32.420 really fun and they work well so i think that's another way we can think about pollinator gardens

00:49:37.340 and butterfly gardens and and and planting things that are that are eaten by insects and and not

00:49:43.520 not necessarily killing or poisoning them so it's just a different paradigm and i i think most

00:49:48.460 people if they pay attention to insects will find them very fascinating and most beautiful

00:49:53.720 particularly if you can magnify them i think size matters to people you know and if if something's

00:49:59.580 only a centimeter long we tend to ignore it but if you take that centimeter long creature and

00:50:04.600 and take a photograph of it and blow it up on your computer screen or even project it on a wall

00:50:10.100 it's fascinating it's beautiful it's worthy of our attentions and i think a lot of people are

00:50:15.280 just having a blast with moth photography and bee photography and i naturalist and some of these

00:50:21.400 things that helps them identify these these organisms it makes every walk way more interesting

00:50:25.780 yes yes i absolutely agree with that so to conclude our conversation this this conversation

00:50:35.680 where we've gone so many places and i really appreciate the depth of your knowledge i want

00:50:40.620 to read a quote from E.O. Wilson, who said, quote, if all humankind were to disappear, the world would

00:50:46.460 regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were

00:50:52.080 to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos, end quote. He went on to describe how

00:50:57.060 insect extinction would leave us with a mere diet of wind-pollinated grains and fish, praying for

00:51:03.700 the return of bugs and weeds. So I'd love if you could elucidate on what a world without insects

00:51:10.060 would look like? So a world without insects, you know, I think about this all the time and

00:51:15.820 we do have some. When we go to the high Arctic latitudes, Fairbanks, Alaska in North, we don't

00:51:23.660 see many insects. Most of the resources there come from the sea actually and krill and maybe

00:51:29.860 insect analogs in the ocean. I guess that insects are just terrestrial shrimp. I think that's what

00:51:35.220 molecular biologists tell us. But in any case, as we move away from the Arctic and we move towards

00:51:41.340 the equator, insects become absolutely interwoven and integral to how we view the world, what it

00:51:49.880 sounds like, what it smells like, what it tastes like, where our food comes from. There would be

00:51:54.820 much less food. So we would have a very serious food security problem without insects. And it

00:52:02.640 would politically destabilize many countries. The continent of Africa would be very, very

00:52:08.900 compromised if we started seeing major declines in pollinators. We absolutely are dependent on

00:52:17.200 these for our economy, for security, for food on our table. So there's a lot of bad things that

00:52:23.600 would happen. I think we would essentially lose many of our insectivorous birds straight away,

00:52:29.680 disappearance of bats. We would have some real pest problems. We're not going to actually lose

00:52:35.140 all insects. What we'll get on the other side of a huge extinction crisis of insects would be

00:52:41.720 a bunch of things like cockroaches, perhaps, and perhaps some flies and things are going to get

00:52:48.140 through that we consider very pest-like or maybe even carry human diseases. We would have the

00:52:55.000 buildup of dung. Dung would no longer be processed by insects. That's largely what they do.

00:53:01.220 Carrion, roadkill would build up along roads. There would be much slower nutrient recycling.

00:53:07.180 Leaves would accumulate in our yard. It would be a much messier place to live. We certainly

00:53:12.900 wouldn't want that. And, you know, I love insects for their beauty. I love them for their songs.

00:53:18.720 I love going to sleep late summer in New England and hearing the katydids grinding away. 1.00

00:53:24.440 I leave my window open just so I can hear all the coercing insects. 1.00

00:53:29.260 I love fireflies.

00:53:30.380 And so we'd have a world much, much diminished in terms of its aesthetic beauty and interest,

00:53:35.840 you know, in terms of when we walk through a jungle or even walk in our own backyards.

00:53:42.420 Well, thank you so much, Dr. Wagner.

00:53:45.080 This has been a really illuminating conversation and one that I think more people need to be a part of

00:53:53.820 because we cannot overlook the insects and the invertebrates. They are so much a part of the

00:54:01.220 foundation of life itself. And this has been really interesting to dive into all of these

00:54:08.240 wormholes with you. So thank you so much for your time. Yeah. Wormhole seems an appropriate

00:54:13.600 analogy. So yeah. Okay. Well, I'm glad you made the point about stop measuring and start doing

00:54:22.060 something. That's a message that really needs to be told in a lot of your episodes. And I'm

00:54:27.700 starting to share it with my colleagues that science is great, but you need to take it and

00:54:34.940 do something with it. Absolutely. And there was actually this one other thought that I did want

00:54:39.040 to share with you kind of around that same feeling around stop measuring, let's do something. And

00:54:47.080 it's not fully similar, but I was reading that there are scientists in Finland that recently

00:54:51.480 developed a vaccine to protect bees against disease. And I just can't help but really kind

00:54:58.940 of feel dismayed at our propensity to think that scientific advance will get us out of the hole we

00:55:04.680 continue to dig. Like how crazy that instead of just working to remove all these cancerous and

00:55:10.100 nervous system wrecking pesticides or development projects like we've been talking about, but

00:55:15.920 instead we're going to develop a vaccine. So it kind of reminds me of this feeling like, oh, we

00:55:21.120 don't have to stop anything we're doing. We can just keep relying on scientific advances

00:55:25.340 to somehow solve the problem, but it's not actually even touching the root of the problem.

00:55:31.260 Right. Yeah. It's such a dynamic landscape. I'm most concerned about turning things around,

00:55:38.640 and I don't know how that's going to come about. I met with climate activists in New York City

00:55:44.520 last night, and some of those are engineers and some of them are artists who paint glaciers and

00:55:51.100 some of them are, you know, work at museums and they're trying to get the message of climate

00:55:55.080 change through display. So there's so many different ways we can attack this. And I wouldn't

00:56:03.260 discount technology in terms of being part of the solution. I mean, there's, and we can, and part of

00:56:08.500 that could actually be just making, you know, doing stuff with algae and bacteria to trap

00:56:16.220 atmospheric carbon and stuff like that. So I don't know where the solutions are going to come from,

00:56:20.360 but they can come from artists. They can come from dancers. And I just want us all to do

00:56:24.520 something. And it does seem crazy that we'd be developing vaccines for bees, though.

00:56:32.440 That wouldn't be where I would start. But if we can all just work together and keep some of this

00:56:39.480 carbon in the ground and figure out how to keep it out of the atmosphere, that's the most

00:56:44.200 important thing. And I think there's some real opportunities by getting engineers together with

00:56:50.180 biologists and and uh coming up with something that's living a living machine that involves

00:56:55.500 algae and and uh yeah it can produce oxygen and and photo and food all at the same time while

00:57:01.900 scrubbing the atmosphere or something there's all kinds of novel things that uh we we can think

00:57:07.560 about and it's it's just important that we sign up and make a commitment and do the right thing

00:57:20.180 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.

00:57:38.760 I'm Ayanna Young.

00:57:40.560 The music you heard today was by Santi Paro.

00:57:43.740 I'd like to thank our podcast team,

00:57:45.560 our podcast audio producer, Andrew Storrs,

00:57:48.520 our media researcher and writer francesca glass bell our social media coordinator aaron wise

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00:58:17.400 time long away from this wild open sky on the concrete trails and wine through the canyons

00:58:23.840 dark and white the sounds of people talking words of blue and gray smells of doors and windows

00:58:34.240 closed against the day sweet smell of the pines tall western cedar drifting on the wind

00:58:47.400 Through the mountains like a river

For The Wild - April 10, 2019

Dr. DAVID WAGNER on the Ever Indispensable Insect ⧸114

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