Insects are the most abundant group of animals on the planet. There are an estimated 10 quintillion of them on Earth.

But in recent years, scientists have found disturbing evidence that insect populations are on the decline around the world.

The environmental threats to insects are numerous: deforestation, pesticides, and climate change all seem to play a part in declining populations, a phenomenon UConn ecologist David Wagner and colleagues described as a “death by a thousand cuts” in a January 2021 special issue of PNAS dedicated to the issue of insect decline.

This hour, we talk with the scientists and journalists trying to make sense of the precipitous decline in insect populations around the world.  We hear from a Nevada researcher whose recent study in the journal Science helps pinpoint the role of climate change in disappearing butterfly populations across the American West.

And we ask: what does loss could mean for us, and what can we do about it?

GUESTS:

• Elizabeth Kolbert - Staff writer at the New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction. She wrote a cover story for National Geographic’s May 2020 issue about worldwide insect decline. Her new book is Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future
• Dr. David Wagner - Entomologist and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UConn
• Dr. Matthew Forister - Insect ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno

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