[Elizabeth Jeffrey] >> My name is
Elizabeth Jeffrey,
co-chair of
the Program
Committee for East
Central Illinois
Master Naturalists.
Before we start,
a little housekeeping.
Participants
will be muted and
images hidden.
To better show
the presentation,
please use chat to
ask your questions,
which Dr. Berenbaum will
answer at the end.
Dr. May Berenbaum
joined the faculty of
the Department of
Entomology at
the University of Illinois
here in Urbana In 1980.
She has served as
head of the department
since 1992 and has
held the Swanlund Chair of
Entomology since 96. Dr. Berenbaum's,
research is focused on interactions
between flowering plants
and insects ranging from
pollinators to crop pests,
and on the application of
ecological
principles towards
sustainable
management practices.
A member of the National
Academy of
Sciences since 94,
she chaired the 2007
Committee on the
Status of pollinators
in North America.
She testified before
Congress on issues relating
to honey bee health and
pollinator decline.
She is devoted to
public engagement
in science
and has authored
six books about
insects for the
general public,
including a cut a
honey bee cookbook.
And she founded
several outreach and
citizen science activities
including bee spotter and
the UI polygon- polinatarium,
they community may
know best for
the annual insect
fear film festival
now in its 38th year.
In 2011, she received
the Tyler Prize for
Environmental Achievement.
And in 2014, she
was presented with
the National
Medal of Science
from President
Barack Obama.
As next week is
pollinator week,
we hope you will
all leave here
today with a message for
the general
public about all
doing our piece to
protect our pollinators.
Dr. Berenbaum,
we give you a very
warm welcome.
[May Berenbaum] >> Thank you, Dr. Jeffey,
and thank you all
for coming today.
I mean, it's
a beautiful day
and I know you could be out
enjoying real life flowers
and real life pollinators,
so thank you for
coming inside and sharing
this time with me
and letting me
share with you
my enthusiasm for
flowers and pollinators.
So with that,
let me stop.
And I didn't know, I didn't
know how stop my video.
There we go and
talk about the
pollinator apocalypse.
If there is such
a thing and
so there's been
a lot of talk
about the insect
apocalypse through
the pollinator
apocalypse and it
actually is worth looking into
the origin of the word.
It's actually
from the Greek
meaning revelation.
It's from the
book of Daniel,
which is an account
of the life
of the prophet Daniel,
who was saved from
his enemies by God,
and who learned in one of
his many visions that
Israel would similarly
be saved from its enemies.
in the end of
days, from Daniel 12,
there shall be a time of
trouble such as there never
was since there
was a nation
even to that same time.
Kinda sounds like
2020, doesn't it?
Well, non-Biblically,
an apocalypse
is considered to be
a disaster on a
cataclysmic scale.
And in fact,
there's a whole genre
of apocalyptic
fiction that imagines
a sudden catastrophic event
that causes the collapse
of civilization.
Now, causes
can be natural, and
out of human control or human,
and then the result
of evil or greed.
And just a few
examples of the genre,
death of grass, way back in
1956 was the story of,
of a mutation of
a virus and magic
fictional virus,
Chung Li virus, that wipes
out all members of
the grass family,
including grain crops,
with predictable
cataclysmic consequences.
Hot House from
1962 imagines
Earth getting locked
in this orbit
facing the sun,
where plants over dominate
all other life forms by
basically
photosynthesizing
Non-stop. The
Blight is when
a powerful international
organization aimed
world domination does so
by killing all the trees.
And as far as I
know, there's,
there's really
only one novel,
apocalyptic novel, on
the loss of any arthropod
and this is kind of a cheat.
It's not all insects.
Well, all insects
disappeared.
This is Charles
Pellegrino's  Dust.
All insects
disappeared because of
an intermittent cyclical
extinction event.
Humans had nothing
to do with it.
This intermittent cyclical
extinction event,
which happens every 30
million years or so,
is not documented in the
actual fossil record.
But it was, the reason,
I think it's a
cheat, is that yes,
all the insects disappear,
but all the
ecological niches are
subsequently
filled by mites,
which are also arthropods.
So that I did not
find this very scary,
but many readers did.
But in November of 2018,
the New York Times
ran a story,
a cover story in
the magazine section about
what they dubbed the
insect apocalypse.
And this generated
a conversation
on a global
scale about what
exactly was going on and
recurring questions of
whether there is or
is not an actual
Apocalypse.
Now what triggered
your stories was
a series of studies that
had appeared in
the relatively
short period of time,
suggesting that in
fact there were
massive declines
of arthropods,
particularly insects,
happening in
many places in the world.
One of the notable ones,
it was mentioned
in that story,
which was published
in 19-2017,
was a study done in
Germany over a period of
27 years in 63 nature
preserves that
involved citizen scientists
doing a series of
regular surveys of
insect biomass.
So just the weight
of flying insects,
not the number of
species, but the weight.
And over this
27-year period,
this study documented
a seasonal decline of
76% in the weight
of insect,
flying insects,
and mid-summer
decline of 82%.
This was a
staggering amount,
and the study received
a lot of attention.
And some of the attention
was critical in
that there are some
weaknesses of the study.
First of all,
biomass is not the
same as biodiversity. Biomass
you could have
a large quantities
of a single species.
And if that single
species disappears,
then you have a
decline in biomass,
but not much impact
on biodiversity.
Strictly speaking,
the number of
species. Sampling
was not done in
the same plots over the
27 year study span.
So data didn't
really depict
a long-term trend
for any given site.
And there were only flying
insects sampled and a
track called the malaise-
a malaise trap was used
to acquire the
insect samples,
which leaves many
other parts of
the plant communities where
insects could have
been increasing
in diversity.
Then early in 2018,
in October of 2018,
there was a study
that came out.
There was
equally shocking.
It came out in
the proceedings
International
Academy of Sciences.
And it it was
a study done in
rain forest in Puerto
Rico comparing
a two-year period of
sampling in 1976 to
77 to a two years period
of sampling the same place,
2012 and 2013,
documenting, as you see
in the figure here,
massive declines
between the early
and later samples
in both ground arthropods
and canopy arthropods.
The news coverage was
quite breathless.
One of the most disturbing
articles I've ever read,
scientist says of study
detailing climate
driven bug
apocalpse, I'm pretty
sure the scientist
is not the one who
called it a bug-pocalypse,
but people were alarmed
at these reports.
And again, the
scientific community
offered some critiques
of the methods.
Mostly that in
this two sets of
two-year samples,
they fail to take
into account
population cycles
of insects,
which routinely hit
highs and lows.
There are sudden
losses and biodiversity,
especially in the tropics,
according to
hurricanes and
successional changes
And these were not
taken into account.
It was just drawing a line
between two points,
basically. The authors
responded and there is
a little cryptically
basically question some of
the statistical analysis of
their critics
and then offered
yet another
correction because
they'd misidentified one of
the arthropods
in their survey.
So that's
another problem is
identifying species
in order to
calculate diversity.
So early, this is
the one, early in 2019.
Another shocking
Story came out.
This was based
on a meta-analysis,
a review of the literature.
And this review
demonstrated,
documented a 40% that
of the insect
species evaluated,
40% were threatened with
extinction and some
in fact, aquatic taxa,
of those living
in the water,
were at risk of,
of extinction.
They identified
among the main causes,
conversion to
intensive agriculture,
but also pollutants,
invasive species
and climate change.
And this also
generated headlines in
several different
languages and
dire forecasts for the
survival of humankind.
And also elicited
criticisms by other
scientists. Two of
the main critiques of
this insect, this
literature review,
first of all, when
these authors reviewed
the literature,
they use the search
term decline,
which immediately
biased the results
that they would find that
they had done a comparable
search looking at
increases rather than
declines in abundance,
it's not clear
they would have
found the pattern
they found.
The other
problem was there
was a bias in the
geographic areas
where the studies had
been carried out.
Their search
was in English.
So the
studies that
they cited were
published primarily in
North America and Europe.
North America
and Europe do
not possess most of
Earth's biodiversity,
especially arthropod
diversity.
So it's unclear whether
this non-random sample of
the world's biomes
was necessarily
predictive of global
biodiversity loss.
At least six
studies in 2019,
we're focused just on bee
decline based on
museum collection
specimens, bumble
bees in particular.
So there's six
different studies
where authors went
into museums,
pulled out drawers
of specimens,
and then documented
based on
the species and how
they were represented
in past collections,
that in fact, bumblebees
were in decline.
And now the thing to
remember invariably,
when there are stories
about bees that are
covered by newspapers
or any other media.
Bad puns seemed to
be irresistible,
and you will see
many more of these.
So the buzz about
bumblebees isn't good,
right? Very original.
Now again, these
studies all could be
criticized by
the limitations
of doing museum
stuff based studies.
First of all, if
you're looking
at specimens in museum,
you're provide,
you can get
information about
the presence of species,
but you cannot-
and for anything
about their absence,
you can't collect
what isn't
there and you don't know
why it wasn't there.
Sampling has
typically biased
toward places that are
accessible or that have
populations that
are interested
in biodiversity.
So the sampling is biased
toward in the
Galapagos Islands,
the island with the
airport typically has
more biodiversity
than the islands
that are harder to get to.
The same thing
across the US.
The county that host
the land-grant
university with
the entomology
department always
has exceptionally
high levels of
insect diversity.
Because people are way more
entomologists are way more
likely to characterize
what's easy to get to.
There's also
a bias toward
species that are
easily identified.
Often collectors
won't collect
a specimen if they
can't recognize it.
And you don't know how
space limited any
specific museum is.
And often museums have to
discard duplicate
specimens because
they just don't have space.
Now the fact
that some high
profile publications
have been criticised for
methodological irregularities
or limitations
emphasises the
difficulty of
documenting insect
biodiversity to
relatively poorly
developed state
of counting methods.
And it's very, also
very hard to project
population trends due to
the deficiencies
of sampling.
We don't have baseline
studies on which
to compare
contemporary sampling.
So there's a lot of
guesswork involved.
And as a result,
some of the
population changes
that have been documented
or not particularly robust,
particular, especially
because many insects
have these boom
and bust cycles.
You've probably
noticed them.
Really good year
for mosquitoes
this year, actually.
Last year
was- we weren't so
bothered by mosquitoes.
But it's very
typical for
insects have boom and bust.
And you can kind
of see the pattern
here with one of
these very famous
surveys of
the size of
the over-wintering
populations
of monarch butterflies
who undergo a heroic
migration every year.
They overwinter as
adults in the East,
the eastern US population
over winters in
a tiny area.
And the near Michoacan,
Mexico in the oyamel fir forests
where the abundance of
the over-wintering
population
is estimated by the,
actually the area covered
by monarch butterflies.
Alright, so interpreting
these patterns
without taking
into account species
specific ecological
attributes such as boom and
bust cycles and methodologies
is challenging.
So there's two
populations of
monarchs in North America.
There's the
Eastern North
American monarchs that
over-wintering in the
fir forests of Mexico.
And then there's the
western population,
which overwinter is
along the Pacific coast.
So the Western
population also has
a pattern of decline and
also typical boom
and bust cycles,
and this is a study
that reported
a 97% population drop of
average historical
abundance is
between the eighties
in the mid tense,
20 tens, and, and
a spectacular drop in
2018, 2019 with
the conclusion
that the available studies
reinforce the
hypotheses that
over-wintering habitat
loss and loss of
central California
breeding habitat,
as well as pesticide
use are like
the important
contributors to decline.
But it's really
difficult to
estimate the
decline because
of a methodological changes.
So that the
authors had to use
a statistical
trick as it were,
to estimate how the
pre-1995 samples
compared to post
95 samples.
And you can see
this grey area is as
basically the,
the error range.
So the, the peak
could've been here,
it could have been here,
could have been here.
And how steep
the decline is
97% decline is
based on the very
highest point,
which overall may well
have been an
anomalous year.
Now, none of
these niceties
is discussed at
great length
during media coverage.
This is an
example of how
sometimes the
predictions get
ahead of the biology.
California
is most famous
Butterflies and death
spiral extinctions file
an alarming
precipitous drop in
the Western monarch
butterfly population.
California could spell
doom for this species
is scenario the
biologist say could
also plunge bug
eating birds and
other species
into similar death spirals.
Don't think the
biologists were
saying that the decline of
the monarch would
cause a plunge
and bug eating bird
populations because
very few birds can
handle monarch
butterflies because
they famously store or
sequester poisonous
substances from
their Asclepias
or milkweed host plants are
called cardiac glycosides
or cardenolides,
their heart poisons
that induce vomiting.
And here you see a blue jay
attempting to eat a
monarch butterfly.
And there you see
the consequence here.
And subsequently,
the blue jays that have
experienced monarchs
will not only avoid them,
but anything that
even vaguely
resembles a monarch.
So that's at
least one thing
you don't have
to worry about.
People are worried all,
all around the world.
And just like politics,
the insect Apocalypses
might be local.
There may be
local losses of
high-profile charismatic
insects, like monarch
butterflies,
but does that mean,
what does that mean
relative to all insects?
How broadly our trends
and geographically
restricted studies
applicable elsewhere.
And here you
see that concern.
Hong Kong is worried
about moths, the insect-
a-geddon in
New Zealand is,
well, has this all
buggered as it were,
I told you about
the bad puns. Here
you have a concern
in California and
insects are disappearing
in India
and so everyone
has a slightly
different take.
The insect apocalypse
has really
gripped people's
imagination,
but it's worth mentioning,
it's not even our
first insect apocalypse.
If you do a Google
trends analysis,
Google Trends is
a site or app,
I guess on Google,
that lets you
survey searches
on Google over time to
see when people are
searching for
particular terms.
And here you see
this is basically,
right here
is when The New York
Times magazine
article appeared.
And lot of interesting
insect Apocalypses,
but then bizarre peak
all the way back in 2004.
And I thinking I'm
an entomologist,
I don't remember an
apocalypse in 2004.
And this was
over-the-top language in
a news story
about I'm sorry,
and the emergence
of the seven tear--
year cicadas in the,
in the Northeast.
It's one of the
very large broods.
Brood nine, I think,
brood ten
of the periodical
17 year cicada.
And that, that's
one headline
that got a lot of
traction here.
The apocalypse was a term
that attracted
people's attention too,
but it referred
mostly to 2007
concern about colony
collapse disorder.
And that concern arose
in February of 2007
because in fact,
managed bee populations
had declined
and in February,
half of all of America's
bees are transported to
California almond
orchards in order
to provide
pollination services.
and again,
the New York Times
triggered a worry about
the bee-pocalypse with a
story that appeared
in February in
the business section
about whether or
not the almond crop
would be endangered.
But there's still
the apocalypse
interests going
into the present.
So we've actually
been discussing
crises of biodiversity since
1992, when Edward O. Wilson,
legendary biologist,
entomologist,
coined the term,
or at least first
used the term
in his 1992 book,
The Diversity of Life.
That was 27 years ago.
And pollinator
biodiversity
loss became
really attracted
attention around
1996 with
the publication of a book
that hasn't really gotten
the credit it deserves
for raising awareness.
This is a book called
The Forgotten
Pollinators written
by Steve Buchmann
and Gary Nabhan,
and in this book
they basically
looked across
years of study
to demonstrate
a very consistent pattern
across many different
groups of pollinators.
So not just birds,
but also bees,
butterflies, bats,
and the like,
all seeming
to decline in abundance
and diversity.
Well, this started
a conversation and in 1996,
the Subsidiary Body on
scientific, technical,
and technological advice of
the convention
on biodiversity,
which is a global
meeting every year,
was held in Montreal,
led to the establishment of
an international pollinator
conservation
initiative in 96.
The third comes
of the parties on
this convention
on biodiversity,
which was in Buenos Aries,
led to the decision 3.2,
pollinators became
a priority group.
October 1998,
the International
Workshop on
conservation and
sustainable use of
pollinators and
agriculture led to
the San Paulo Declaration
on pollinators.
In 1999, the USDA and
the US Geological Survey
joined forces in Logan,
Utah to discuss
the importance
of pollinator loss on
managed in wild
populations in the US.
And 2 thousand in
the fifth meeting of
the Conference
of the Parties
of the Convention
on Biodiversity
led to an internationally
initiative for
conservation
and sustainable
use of pollinators.
April 2002,
the international
pollinators initiative
was approved. In 2002 an NGO called
the North American
pollinator
protection
campaign approached
the National
Research Council of
the National Academy
of Sciences,
that's the research arm
of the National Academy,
the ones that carry out,
they're called
consensus studies.
This is an objective group
of scientists who examine
all the literature on
a particular issue
and then make
recommendations on policy
based on evidence.
And they
suggested a study.
The study was approved,
receive fundings,
got started, and basically
got underway in 2004,
which happened to
be a year when
many different
papers came out
documenting long-term
population declines
in all kinds of
pollinators.
This is a study
on British moths
published in 2002 that
was based on 35 years
of light traps.
Moths, of course, come to
lights, so Rothamsted
is actually was founded in
the mid 19th century
as Agricultural Research
Station in Britain.
They showed of
338 large moths,
macro mothss, 50 over half of
them displayed
significant declines.
Here you see
them decreasing.
And in contrast,
only about a fifth of
them showed any increases.
So Britain, basically,
Great Britain is very good
about its natural
resources in
many naturalists there
that amateurs that,
that monitor things and
the whole
country's gridded off
into ten kilometer squares.
So it's, there's
a grid system in
which biodiversity
measures can
be mapped and compared.
And in science,
there appeared an article
comparing survey data on
butterflies from
1968 to 1972,
and then 95 to 99
across Britain and
found that butterflies,
had disappeared from 13% of
the previously
occupied squares.
The projection
was made of insects
elsewhere in the world
or similarly sensitive,
the known global
extinction rates of
vertebrate and
plant species have
an unrecorded parallel
among the invertebrates,
strengthening
the hypothesis
that the natural world is
experiencing a sixth major
extinction event
in history.
Again, British
bees, Brit Britain,
Britons are very good
at natural history
observations,
particularly
British hover flies
and British bees.
In 2006, Biesmeijer
et all reported
declines both
in the Netherlands
and in Britain,
documenting and documented
the geographic extent
of these declines.
So here you see
the species changes,
decreases, are
the reddish and
increases are the blues.
And definitely
in Britain,
bees are in decline
and the serfids
are in decline.
Dutch bees are
also in decline.
Serfids seem to be holding
their own in the
Netherlands.
But this was
another awareness
raising paper. In 2006,
that National
Research Council
study was released.
I was privileged to
chair that committee.
There are experts
on every group
of pollinator on
that committee.
And what we were
able to show after
about 18 months and 3
thousand references
Yes.
There was a very clear
downward population trend
for honey bees in
United States.
Since data began
to be collected
around 1945,
the number of
managed colonies
had dropped more than half,
so about 5.5 down to
2.5 million colonies.
The other problem
with wild populations,
we did not have data.
It was us staggering
realization that we
had failed to keep
watch over the,
the status of pollinators
on which we depend other
than the managed
pollinators.
Now this is,
these findings
really because
the backdrop of,
of a disturbing pattern of
accelerated extinction
rates across
all kinds of taxes
other than insects.
People tend to
overlook insects,
but they're
consistent patterns
across vertebrates of,
of an accelerated
pace of extinction.
And that led people to
believe that this was,
since this rate
of extinction was
unparalleled in
geologic history,
that in fact, humans had,
had led the planet
into a, an
extinction period.
So the history of, of
Earth has been a
series of disasters,
and these are called
mass extinction events
and some go back
to the Ordovician.
There's basically five
over which three quarters
to 90%,
95 percent of the known
organisms or species
on the planet went extinct.
And that causes tended
to be geologic events.
So volcanic activity,
increase in methane,
asteroid impacts,
a rapid cooling.
And the idea began
to gain popularity that,
that maybe humans,
for the first time in
the history of the planet,
we're causing
extinctions the
same way that asteroids,
for example, would
cause extinctions.
So this is a
press release from
1998 announcing
that this mass
extinction event is
the fastest in Earth's 4.5
billion year history,
that's phrase
sixth extinction,
sort of gained
common parlance.
E.O. Wilson, who is
serving a gifted writer,
as well as the remarkable
astute biologist,
projected these
contemporary extinction
rates and estimated
by 2100, half of
Earth's biodiversity
would be extinct.
He proposed instead of
the sixth extinction,
the age of loneliness,
which in its Greco
Latinate roots
as the Eromozic,
The Age of loneliness,
it never really caught on.
But in 2000,
Paul Crutzen and Eugene
Stoermer introduced
the term the
Anthropocene to introduce
this Age of human-caused
extinctions.
So it really
didn't take us that
long to go from defining
biodiversity in 1992,
to realizing today
that we're in
imminent danger of
losing all of it.
Now, the thing
about extinction,
Particularly since 1700,
It's the one form
of environmental
change in which
human involvement is
impossible to deny.
We have it on
and we have
photographic evidence.
We have documentary
evidence
of all sorts that
we are causing extinctions
by human disturbance,
recreation, war,
and work, transportation,
energy production,
overharvesting,
agriculture, land clearing,
urban development,
invasive species
and disease.
And we can't,
unlike apocalyptic fiction,
blame it on alien viruses,
planetary aberrations or
cyclical geologic
disruptions.
So the more people delved
into the literature,
the more alarming
the picture
gets for insects.
This is a paper
in Science Magazine,
very high-profile
journal of
defaunation in the
Anthropocene,
which really for
the first time
brought insects into
the discussion
and in fact of
all the insects with
International Union for
Conservation of Nature,
documented
population trends.
A third are declining.
30 to 60% in the UK
have declining
ranges. Globally,
compiled index of all
invertebrates over
the past four years show
40, overall 45% decline.
Meta-analysis of
the effects of
anthropogenic or
human originated
disturbances on
lepidoptera
shows overall lepidoptera
are displaying
lower diversity
rather than increasing in
diversity particularly
in human disturbed sites.
Now, insects may be
at particular risk of
decline because
two aspects
of the characterize,
the group, the
class insecta.
Most insects that
go extinct or narrow
habitat specialists and are
associated with
hosts, either
plant or vertebrate hosts
that themselves
have gone extinct.
So these are
often overlooked,
causes of
extinction when,
for example, the huia,
which is
a New Zealand bird
that went extinct.
Going extinct
with it was
the bird louse that
lived on only on
its feathers,
the only place on earth.
So insects are more
at risk because as a group,
they're more
specialized in their
habitats and their habits.
And that's
how they became
so diverse in
the first place.
They divide the world up
more finely than most,
any, most other
animal groups.
So moths, which don't
get the publicity that
butterflies have,
more than 90% of
North American
lepidopterans
are moths. As caterpillars,
90% of them feed
on three or fewer
plant families.
Very specialized.
So here's one genus
which you may know,
Oenothera, which is
Evening Primrose,
There are
four species of
this tiny little
moth genus-
well, the moths are
tiny- genus Mompha,
there are four species of
Mompha that feed on
one genus of plant.
And they do this by
specializing on
different parts
of the plants.
Here's Momfa rufocristatella
which forms galls on flower
stems of Gaura
biennial Gaura,
which grows in
Illinois prairies
and here's
Momfa stellata,
which bores into
the flowers
on Oenothera biennis.
In fact,
right here in
Central Illinois,
actually in part
in my front yard,
my graduate students, Terry
Harrison back in 2005,
identified a previously
unknown species.
So this is again
a little brown moth,
just like the Momfas,
It's Agonopterix,
very hard to
tell them apart,
and he described in
the literature were
three species of
Agonopterix that
feed on two plants
in the rotation-
The family, Rhutacea
citrus family. There's
Zanthoxylum or
prickly ash, or
Ptelea trifoliata,
the wafer ash.
And Terry notice that,
that in fact there was
a fourth species
that was time
displaced. It fed
on the same host,
but later in the season.
So here's the key,
and you can see that
if it's feeding
on Ptelea trifoliata,
wafer ash, if it has a,
if it's abundant in
late June and in late July,
it's a new species.
Previously undescribed.
You described it,
named it after
his wife. And
here are the ones that
were known previously.
So right here in
Central Illinois,
there's insect diversity we
did not even know about,
because these
are capable of
dividing up the habitat
and the resources
so finely, to allow
this diversification.
Okay, why does it matter
if we lose species?
Because in terrestrial
communities in particular,
insects provide
ecosystem services.
So ecosystem
services are
the benefits that people
obtain from the
natural world.
And insects
are so diverse,
they contribute
to all kinds
of ecosystem services.
They provide
products; food,
water, biochemicals,
genetic resources.
They perform
regulatory services
including disease
regulation,
water regulation,
water purification,
and especially pollination,
as well as
supporting services.
Termites are very
important in
soil formation. Insects are
the major recyclers
on the planet,
dung beetles,
carrion feeders.
They provide
population regulation
for other insects.
Predacious
Insects keep other insects,
plant-feeding insects
under control.
They feed vertebrates
and they pollinate flowers.
Because 90% of insects
have a complex life cycle
where it goes from
egg to larva to
a pupa to adults called
complete metamorphosis.
They, they can contribute
different ecological
eco system services
over the course of
their life cycles.
They're important prey
for vertebrates,
including bats,
rodents and birds, also
invertebrates including
moths, spiders and bugs.
They provide ecosystem
services such as
detritus processing
or think about it.
But these caterpillars,
these are clothes moths.
You find them in the
wool in your closet.
But they actually
evolved to
feed on the fir and
skin and feathers of
dead vertebrates.
There's parasites of other,
there's some
moth caterpillar
that are parasites
of other insects.
There are
moth caterpillars
that are predators.
This one is
the sloth moth,
which lives on algae that
grows on the fir of sloths
in Central and
South America.
It was a mystery
for decades.
as to where the caterpillars
of this month occurred,
because they were not on
the body of the soft moth,
but apparently
sloths defecate
once a week, they come down
from the trees to the
forest floor, defecate,
the moths
flutter out and lay
eggs in slot dung,
and that's where
the caterpillars grow.
But again, amazing diversity,
but it's--
The pollinators are what
we're talking about.
So remember some
of the criticisms
of the studies?
Biomass matters, yes,
but it's not
species diversity.
Species of insects in
particular may not be
interchangeable
with respect to
the ecosystem services
they contribute.
So around the
world, most species
of figs are
pollinated by only
one or two species
of tiny fig wasp
in the family
and Agaonidae
the fig wasp family,
they're tiny, there's
nothing else that
pollinate them,
figs have a very
strange reproductive
biology
where the flowers
are actually,
it's called the
psychonium
and the flowers are inside,
the wasp can get in
and pollinate them.
They use some of
these structures to
raise their larvae and
others just to... some
feed the larvae,
others enter and
the wasp will
pick up pollen and
distribute it.
And otherwise, if there's
no wasp, there's
no pollination.
And we discovered
that the hard way
here in the US.
We produce,
California produces
98% of America's figs.
6400 acres,
31,000 tons of
fruit, $15 million
industry. Commercial
fig cultivation began in
1880 with
the importation from
the Mediterranean.
Where figs are native
of Smirna figs.
14 thousand cuttings
were distributed in 1881.
Nothing produced
mature fruit.
And the reason
they did not
is that no one knew
that the pollinators didn't
come with the fruits.
Took eight years for
investigators to
identify the proper
fig wasp species in
Europe, bring them
back, to figure
out this lifecycle
and allow it
to acclimate to California
before we actually could
to have a fig industry.
Not just any
fig wasp would do.
And in the natural,
in natural communities,
figs are even
more important
in that they are
keystone species.
So the fig tree,
they grow,
their cosmopolitan and
tropical communities
and the thing about
the things they
continuously produce,
fruit and everything in,
as far as communities,
can eat these fruits.
So we've  got all
kinds of vertebrates.
We got bats, and
we've got primates,
and we've got birds,
and we've got rodents.
Figs fall in the water
and fish eat them.
There are all kinds of,
there are the fig
wasp pollinators
and all kinds of insects
eat the foliage.
They are what are
called keystone species.
So just like a keystone
holds two halves of
an arch together,
the keystone species holds
all the pieces of a
community together.
This is a study
that was done in
Eastern Australia
of fig trees.
84 bird species
visited these trees.
And surprisingly, 55 of
those 84 species were
not frugivorous,
they didn't feed
on the fig fruits,
They were insectivores.
So insectivorous
birds in fig trees
increase in abundance
when the figs are
ripening and as
the figs ripen
Here you see the
insectivores. Figs ripen,
the fig wasps
come out and
the fig wasp are an
important source
of protein for these birds.
Once the figs ripen
then the fruit-feeding
birds come in.
So these stingless
fig wasps
are an important
source of food,
particularly in
drier habitats.
And the fact
that the fig trees
produce ripening
fruits continuously
all year long means that
fig wasps are also
available all year long,
including times when other
insects are not available.
So they're not
interchangeable.
If you go into
biology textbooks,
invertebrates are
depicted anonymous
and interchangeable
in food webs.
And when we get specific
names of these vertebrates.
And then when we look at
the, at the insects,
there's just a couple
that are singled out,
or are there sort
of anonymously
compiled in a
little corner here,
Insects. Here we go.
How many thousands
of species are
represented in
this terrestrial food web
by these two little
sad figures.
And again, biomass
is not everything.
Great tits are
insectivorous.
They feed
their young like
so many birds do
with insects.
But this was a study that
showed that size matters,
at least if you're feeding
your offspring and
you're a great tit.
And what happens is they
feed initially as
the season progresses
on spiders.
But after a point,
the caterpillars
that are present in
the community get big
enough that it's worth,
the great tits' time
to collect them.
So what happens
if you look at
the triangles,
caterpillars
are not popular
until they reach a
particular mass,
then they are collected
and fed to birds.
So a family of
great tits could fail to
produce offspring if there
are no large caterpillars
in the community,
because it's energetically
not supportive,
sustainable
for them to bring
in multiple foraging test,
bringing in small species
or small individuals of
a particular species.
So it's not
just biodiversity,
it's not just biomass.
It's also more than biomass
in that narrow species
are equally edible.
And summer are outright toxic.
We talked
about the monarch.
Monarch and its
relative the Queen
both Danaus species
sequester these poisons,
cardiac glycosides,
from milk weeds.
And they're about the
same size and they
share a color
pattern with the
black swallowtail.
There actually
some morphs,
there's a lot of
variation in color.
Often freshmen
undergraduates
will mistake black swallowtails
for monarchs.
Fortunately, they don't
eat caterpillars,
because if you
eat monarchs,
you get very sick.
If you eat black swallowtails
you probably, well,
I don't know how
you would feel,
but if you're a bird,
you'd be better off.
So species matter,
and we know that insects
have gone extinct.
We know that
pollinators in
particular have
gone extinct.
And this was accomplished,
we did for our study,
NRC study on the status of
pollinators in
North America.
And here is a list of
the many documented
extinctions,
particularly on islands.
So pollinators on
islands have trouble.
And these are the,
this is the
Hawaiian islands.
So very sad stories of,
of extinctions on
these islands,
particularly in the
leeward islands,
many extinctions
of moth species,
more so than butterflies.
Again, because of
human disturbance.
This is the sad story
of Layson Island,
Island where rabbits
were introduced.
Not a great idea.
Rabbits basically
completely
destroyed the
plant community,
which in turn had
devastating effects
on the bird community.
Here you see what this is
Layson prior to the
introduction of rabbits.
And this is what the
same location looked like
after rabbits
were introduced,
native plants
went extinct and
the native insects
specialists
on those planets went
extinct with them.
Seven out of eight
weevil species,
six out of eight,
noctuid moths.
And in fact the Layson
noctuid moth, which
was it's now called
Hypena laysanensis
this was endemic
found only on
Laysan Island and it
was likely the
main specied--
I'm sorry, Mike can
just stepped on the
Okay. Sorry.
Is the main
species eaten by
a bird known as the
Laysan Miller bird.
It was known by that name
because it fed primarily
on the noctuid moths known
as millers.
And probably the
loss of the laysan
miller moth contributed to
the decline of
the miller bird.
Host specificity leaves
many species vulnerable in
their larval stages.
You probably know about
chestnut blight, a
fungal pathogen of
American chestnut first
detected in 1905.
Within 50 years,
80% of all American
chestnuts were
dead, more than
200 million acres
of chestnuts
were eliminated.
At least 60
species of insects
were known to
feed on Chestnut,
the genus and we seven
were restricted to
the American chestnut,
Castanea dentata.
So about half of
the 60 species
of lepidoptera,
butterflies and moths
known to occur on
species in the
genus Castanea
had hosts in
other families,
but more than 20% fed
only on Castanea species.
About 30% were
recorded on few other
genera in the family.
Seven of the species
that were specific for
American chestnut
were presumed
to have gone
extinct by 1978.
So if you go
to bug guide,
this is what you see.
No default photo.
These are the
seven species
to have since
been recovered,
but when their host goes,
so go the insects.
And the problem is we don't
even know what's out there.
Less than 1 tenth of 1%
of all known species
had been evaluated for
their conservation status.
So there's not
a large number
of 583 that are
known to be,
these are fairly old data
known to be at risk
of extinction.
But when you look out of
the total of almost
a million species,
but if you look at the
proportion that are
threatened compared to the
proportion evaluated,
three quarters of
every species,
of the species of insects
evaluated for
their conservation
status are in trouble.
So the Endangered
Species Act was
enacted in 1973
with the purpose to
conserve imperiled
species in
the ecosystems
on which they
depend. Directs
the US government
to list species
endangered or threatened,
designate critical habitat,
and to develop
recovery plans.
Insects were not
listed initially.
The announcement that
butterflies would
be added to
the lists were not that
was not exactly
front-page news.
In 1975, the
first insect to be
listed was the Schaus
Swallowtail, in 1976.
Today there are
25 butterflies which
represents so the
25 out of 575
4.3% of US butterflies are the list.
There's only one
month out of
11 thousand species of
American butter-
moths, it's .009%.
There's also one
continental bee species
and a continental fly among
the pollinators that
are designated.
So this is the, the moth that's
endangered was listed in
2000 it's Menduca
blackburni,
Blackburnsphinx.
It was once
found throughout
the Hawaiian archipelago,
was thought to be
extinct until 1984,
when it was rediscovered
now in Hawaii.
And it's thought
that it was a victim of
a biological control program
for the tobacco horn
worm, and Manduca sexta,
which looks an awful
lot like the Blackburn,
Blackburn Sphinx
similarly feeds
on plants in the
Solanaceae, the
tomato family.
So a parasitic wasp
was brought into control,
tobacco horn worms,
and attacked it's
close relative.
Manduca blackburni
and led to its decline.
Why is this
consequential?
Well, there is a plant
in the Campanulaceae
called Brighamia insignis, called the
alula, is critically
endangered.
It's endemic to Hawaii.
It's found only
on sea cliffs
in Kauai where
brave botanists have to
climb the cliffs
and hand pollinate.
It has no known pollinators
given its floral
structure was probably
pollinated by the
Blackburn sphinx and
maybe another critically
endangered sphinx
called The Fabulous
Sphinx Moth right here,
which was also
thought to be
extinct until it
was rediscovered.
So today you probably
all know about the
emerald ash borer,
which is a threat to at
trees in the ash genus Fraxinus
there are more than
20 lepidoptera
including five sphingids.
These hawk moths, which are
superb pollinators that may
go extinct if their
hosts go extinct.
Now we know about
the consequence of,
of host plants
going extinct,
but the consequence of
some insects going extinct,
not just that
they plants they
pollinate are in trouble,
the vertebrates that
depend on them may
be in trouble
and we've known
this for 20 years
now, more than 20 years.
This is goes back
to 12 years ago.
BirdWatch Canada,
not a scientific journal,
pointed out that aerial
insectivorous birds
seemed to be in decline.
Here in two languages,
as befits canadian
publications.
Comparing the percentage
variation trends
from past dates
til the present.
You can see
an increase--
well, increasing
numbers of declining birds.
So population
declines were more
conspicuous in
insectivorous birds
in the intervening years.
People have noticed
that the decline in
abundance of insects is
paralleled by
decline in birds.
Here's a study that was done in
Denmark tropical
forest fragments.
Where birds declined--
where insects decline,
birds decline.
This study published just last
year in estimating,
you may have seen
it since 1970,
the past 50 years,
North America's
probably lost about
3 billion birds.
And many of these, in fact,
most of them are from
taxa groups that
depend on insects.
So there's sparrows,
wood warblers,
Blackbird,
sparrow, Old world
sparrows, finches,
swallows, swifts
night jars,
flycatchers, thrushes
and the like.
Okay, so in the few
remaining minutes,
how do we get people
to care about this?
More than ten years ago,
it was considered
challenging to
get the public engaged
and because it
was considered
too complex to detach
from human interests.
If you look at
Google trends
of insect
conservation, has,
insect apocalypse has
not really maintained
its much in the way
of a focus on
Google Trends.
Although Save the
Bees, rather than
the bee apocalypse has
continued to trend,
which is promising.
So according
to one study,
nearly 90% of Americans are
willing to help save
animals from extinction,
but not sure how to help.
So maybe the problem is
not that people don't
want to help or don't care.
They just don't
know how to help.
And another
barrier, I guess,
is that there is
a small percentage
of the population,
the care and are
active and they're the
ones most likely to
respond to efforts
to preserve or
protect biodiversity.
So we're reaching,
we're preaching
to the choir.
Essentially, we're
not reaching
the groups that
are yet or not yet
engaged in, in
conservation.
How do we, how do
we message them?
How do we reach them?
Well, I think
part of the problem
is doing something
just to save
pollinators might seem
like a lot of work.
And I say this
because we'll
look on the web, here
you have three ways
to boost pollination.
Four ways you can help.
5 key ways, six simple,
ways, 7 easy ways,
eight ways you
can save bees.
At the very least,
it might be time-consuming.
Here's ten ways to protect
them, pollinators,
or even overwhelming
20 simple ways to save
pollinators that may be too
much for most Americans.
Some of these tips
are misguided.
Here from a
wiki on how to sit
helps save honey bees
this advice, leave
beehives alone.
When you find them,
don't go disturbing
the bees are taking their
honey or honeycomb.
Which is
good advice,
particularly because
this is a hornets nest,
it is not a
Bees, a beehive.
Honeybees nest in cavities.
You find them
in tree holes.
This is the kind
of nest a hornet builds.
So if you go try to
remove honey from this,
you will be sorely
disappointed,
otherwise misguided too.
And this is though, you
probably all heard about
the Murder Hornet
Vespa mandarinia
which is an
invasive species.
It has shown up only
a few places in,
in Washington State and
in British Columbia.
And people are in
such a panic that I've
been getting flooded
with queries from all over
the country from
people who are
convinced that the
murder hornet is here.
They're called
Murder hornets,
among other things,
because they do
attack bees,
honey bees, and slaughter
them unmercifully.
And they're, they're large,
they're they can be up
to two inches long,
and they're stings
are highly venomous,
but they're as
far as we know,
there are only in
the Pacific Northwest
in a few limited places.
One of the pictures I got,
this is actually a moth,
it's a Seseid moth
that is a very high,
high-fidelity mimic of a,
of a Pelices wasp.
And here is, this is
actually a soft fly,
is a Hymenoptaran
but it is not a hornet
and it does not sting.
So even creating
an action plan, with
my five minutes left,
What's that
five-minute left?
I'm wrapping up.
Creating an action plan,
sounds complicated.
So here's my advice.
You know, seven steps.
What should we do?
How do we get
people involved?
Because so many insects
are threatened by
human activities,
could declines
be slowed by
an inaction plan?
Can we convince people to
stop doing things they
don't need to do
that nonetheless
involve time,
energy, and
economic investment
that not doing can
help save insects.
So look at the causes
of benign ignorance may
be the greatest obstacle to
surviving the
insect apocalypse.
Could be the at least
one way to help
pollinators is stop doing
things that don't
really need to be done.
This is a disaster.
Insect, bug
zappers. Two studies
I know of.  Here's
one that shows that
over two nights
in 1999 and 2002,
the target mosquitoes just
27 and 84 on the two nights.
Chironomidae, non-
biting midges,
almost eight thousand,
ten thousand
killed in the
sampling period.
And they don't
bother anybody.
In fact, they're
beneficial.
They're important
in maintaining
aquatic ecosystems.
Fly fishermen loved
them because they are
food for, for fish.
And yes, some of our
even pollinators,
tiny, tiny Hieronymus,
Moths, of course,
are attracted to light
and to bug zappers,
and in this study,
405 of them were
killed in the sampling
periods in 1999.
Including 62 noctuids.
It's 30 saturniids
and 300 pyralids.
As for agricultural
intensification
of pesticide use,
seed treatments, according
to a 2014 study,
provide negligible
overall benefits
to soybean
production and yet
systemic seed
treatments aren't,
are known to cause problems
for pollinators of
all, particularly bees.
It all visitors to
agro ecosystems lawns.
Lawns .US has
more acreage of
one and turf grass
than corn, soybean orchard,
vineyard nut trees put
together and per
acre lawns receive
more pesticide
applications than
agricultural land and
yet not planting a lawn,
not paying money
for maintenance,
not expending energy to
mow can be replaced
with flowering bee
lawns that require
minimal maintenance
and maintained by
pollinator biodiversity.
Just not mowing actually
increases biodiversity and
some of the plants
that are killed by
weed killers actually
amazing resources
for pollinators.
So dandelions and
white clover,
in Central Kentucky,
50 different species
of insect pollinators,
including 37 bee
species and two of
the six bumblebees are
uncommon and
possibly in decline.
Weed laws are
hard to deal with.
They began proliferating
in the 1970s.
There's a case
to be made for
allowing private
property to
maintain natural
communities of
in place of
manicured lawns.
Planting species that are
more appropriate
for the, the,
the soil and climate
considerations
of the area people want
to conserve and even
politicians should
realize not reversing
executive offers can
be as helpful as passing
laws that protect
pollinators.
The executive orders
saving Bear's Ears,
which is a
national monument.
Bear's Ears
got restricted to
a tiny fraction of its by
a recent reversal of an
Obama-era executive order
and Bears Ears Monument,
that one location has
more bee species than
the entire East Coast.
We still need to
protect habitat,
but maybe more people
can be recruited to
not do things in order
to help insects.
So concept that not doing
anything harmful
is venerable, it's
the guiding ethical
principle in medicine.
Maybe it could
work as well
in insect population
health. Searching Google.
without insects,
humans would die is
75 million results, where
maybe we're woke enough now
to prioritize studies of
the animals that
constitute the bulk
of a planet's biodiversity
And leave the
apocalyptic fiction,
fiction where it belongs.
And I thank you
for listening.
And it's two
o'clock. Thanks.
[Amanda Christensen] >> Very good.
Thank you.
[May] >> Sorry.
I just love this
topic so much.
I sometimes put
too much in.
[Amanda] >> No worries. We're
ready for questions. Go ahead Elizabeth.
[Elizabeth] >> Okay.
How do we get
local homeowners
to give up all
the lawn care products
we use on our lawns.
After a two year sabbatical from
these products
on my lawns,
I noticed worms
coming back in the soil
as a bird sampler
for the last 20 years,
I too have noticed
how many bird species have
disappeared from my yard.
[May] >> I do not
understand lawns.
It is a bizarre obsession.
I can understand
golf courses,
but even golf courses can
be more pollinator
friendly.
It's so much easier
to not have a lawn.
And, and I
don't think people
realize it's just it's
kind of, if you
were this use every
opportunity to tell,
to show them the different
some people don't do well
if you tell them
what to do.
But it's
remarkable how many
people really like bees.
I was astonished
to learn that.
National Geographic
did a survey of people
asking if you could
save one organism, on
the planet, what
would you save?
And that they were
expecting tigers,
elephants or
charismatic vertebrates.
It was the honeybee.
So there is, I think,
a fundamental appreciation
of at least pollinators,
bees and butterflies,
that somehow
gets lost, because it gets
drummed out of people.
So you could just
keep being natural
master naturals,
keep being mass-
master gardeners,
because that's
the best evidence
of why lawns are
not worth the time,
energy, and resources
that they consume.
[Elizabeth] >> Thank you very much.
Is your PowerPoint
going to be available.
Are we going to have
a copy of it later?
[May] >> Well, Amanda
already has a copy of it.
It's not the exact version,
but it's close enough.
[Elizabeth] >> Because there
were a number
of slides where
you had references that
were really interesting to
many people and many people
want to say thank you.
It was absolutely wonderful.
[May] >> Good, good.
Sorry. It was
a little bit longer than it should have been.
[Elizabeth] >> Another question.
Do you happen to
know if deer away has
any impact on pollinators
on insects of any kind.
[May] >> I'm sorry.
If what has...
[Elizabeth] >> Deer away.
It's a it's a spray that...
[May] >> A deer repellent?
[Elizabeth] >> Yes.
[May] >> Oh, gosh.
Do you know what's in it?
[Elizabeth] >> No.
[May] >> Okay. Well, I I don't exactly know.
I could, I could look it up,
but I guess people
use deer away because
of deer ticks or
why do you keep the deer out?
Because you don't want them
eating them right?
Yeah. Good point.
Okay. I don't know.
I don't know
what's in it.
[Elizabeth] >> Okay.
You you answered
us, the loss of
white and green ash
are depleting a certain
number of insects.
Would it help
for us to bring
in prickly ash or
some other blue ash or a
similar?
[May] >> Prickly ash and
blue ash are
different families.
Prickly ash is a
citrus and citrus family,
Rutaceae, it's
a bad name, it's
not international.
Same thing
with wafer ash.
So the ash is
Fraxinus, different,
different, different family.
But yeah, I mean, if the thing
about what I've noticed
both of those plants
used to be much more
abundant in forest
understory,
but they've been driven
out by honeysuckle.
And that's noxious in
the bush honeysuckle and
two species of
noxious invasive,
invasive shrub that
just takes over,
far as the understory and
displaces native
shrubs and produces
fruits that are less
nutritious and suitable for
birds and other wildlife.
So yes, bringing in
those Rutaceae
shrubs would be great.
They're working.
Prickly- emerald ash bore,
is a very challenging
pest species,
and nothing has
worked so far.
But there are some hints
at resistance genes in
some populations of,
of North American Ash.
And I know
that is probably
the most promising
line of research.
Oh, here's a recipe
for deer appellant.
Oh, it's garlic.
It's a home guide. Yeah.
I don't know
what deer away ss
commercially.
[Elizabeth] >> Okay.
You mentioned
bugs, zappers.
[May] >> Pointless.
Absolutely pointless.
[Elizabeth] >> Pictures of yard lights,
do you know if the intermittent
yard light, that only
responds to movement
does that do
less harm to insects?
[May] >> Is that us?
No, sorry.
There's a bit of
controversy about,
about light pollution and
it's impact on insects.
And the thing
about insects is you
can find a species to
illustrate just
about any impact.
So it's very hard to
generalize as is what
happens when people say
we had a really
cold winter,
is going, is that
good or bad for
the insects?
And the answer is
yes, it depends on
what species you're
talking about.
So intermittent light
actually in
some species can disrupt
the life cycle in
that long periods of
uninterrupted darkness
are necessary
to trigger some of
the physiological
changes to
prepare insects for
oncoming winter.
But constant illumination
is also a direct cause
of mortality because moths
in particular many insects,
are attracted to light,
and then that causes
just outright mortality.
So the overall impact
of light is a
little hard to say.
But the more natural you can
make something,
the better off
everybody is.
And it's nice
to talk to people
called naturalists.
[Elizabeth] >> Is there a list
of trees that are most
useful or plants
that are most useful
to provide habitat
for the insects,
given that we
understand one
of the problems,
is breakup of-
[May] >> Yes, fragmentation
of habitat, absolutely.
And in fact, a number
of studies over
the last 20 years,
have shown that
connections are
really important.
You don't necessarily,
if it's impossible to
prevent the fragmentation
of habitat,
build in corridors to
connect fragments,
and you can maintain
considerably more
biodiversity
than without
corridors.
And they
don't have to be
large body, you know,
bodies of land just
enough so that insects can
move and other
forms of wildlife.
In terms of resources
for pollinators,
tree species,
absolutely,
I'm pretty sure I
don't know if
it's available on
the pollinator
pollinatarium website,
but yes,
there are many guides,
you know, where
you can find it
as the pollinator
partnership,
that North American
pollinator
protection campaign,
NAPPC. N-A-P-P-C, has all kinds
of guides and lists
and, and resources
if you're looking for
recommendations for
or planting guides to
promote pollinators.
That there's a diversity
of polinator types which
would demand a diversity
of planting types.
But that information
I'm sure you can find in
the North American
pollinator
protection campaign
NAPPC website.
[Amanda] >> I've just put
it into the chat.
[May] >> Thank you.
[Elizabeth] >> And thank you May, flow through
the chat comments because
so many people are
grateful for your talk.
It was magnificent.
[May] >> I know that it's a little bit bumpy,
and a little bit too long,
but thank you for
your thank you
for listening.
And thank you
was I have I kind
of reassembled this from
an earlier talk and it
was it was fun to do so.
Thank you for this
opportunity to speak
during the summer because
it's everything
else was canceled.
[Elizabeth] >> I know, it's summer.
And thank you again,
May. We're very grateful.
[May] >> Thanks. Everybody's stay
safe, stay healthy,
and enjoy the,
enjoy the plants
and pollinators.
Bye, everybody!
