A scary new study published by German scientists documented a sharp and inexplicable decline of over 75 percent in insect biomass in only 27 years. Since the insects are an extremely important segment of the ecosystem the results suggest Central European nature is collapsing on a massive scale.
To make matters worse measuring was deployed in 63 nature protection areas in Germany (96 unique location-year combinations) showing that the decline is apparent regardless of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain the results. Analysis estimates a year-round decline of 76 percent, and mid-summer decline of unbelievable 82 percent in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study.
Unlike the other studies which often document the decline of a single species this study collected a broad array of flying insects (including the extremely abundant species like flies and mosquitoes), so basically measuring the overall productivity of the German ecosystem. No known factors have so far be found to explain those scary results so the possible conclusion is that we finally managed to kill the environment in general, maybe through the synergy of many destructive elements.
With the results like this we can safely assume we are dealing with the situation which is way past a simple crisis. What we have here is a collapse.