Research on insect deaths in Switzerland and abroad has caused great concern among scientists. That’s why several organizations, led by the agricultural research institute Agroscope, analyzed Swiss insect fauna as part of the Insect project, as Agroscope wrote in a press release. One finding: There is no general insect death observed in this country.
Some species have managed to expand their range by more than 70 percent in the last 40 years. On the other hand, especially cold-loving species lost their habitats. The species that lost the most habitat lost an average of 60 percent of its range.
The winners included most of the grasshopper and dragonfly species studied. Most butterfly species were among the losers.
“As a result, rare species are becoming even rarer and already common species spreading further,” Agroscope’s Felix Neff said in a statement.
Researchers from Agroscope, the Forest, Snow and Landscape Research Institute (WSL), the Organic Agriculture Research Institute (Fibl), and the Swiss Fauna Information Center expect insect populations to continue to change widely as global warming progresses.
The study evaluated the 1.5 million reports on the occurrence of butterflies, grasshoppers and dragonflies that entomologists and ordinary people have collected in Switzerland since 1980.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35223-3
(SDA)