« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2014, 11:53:32 pm »
This doesn’t bode well for the future.
Creepy crawlies decline as human population soars
The study, published in the journal Science, revealed that as the human population has doubled over the last 35 years to now stand at more than seven billion, invertebrate numbers have fallen by nearly half over the same period.
Experts fear this could have an effect on ecosystems as insects, spiders, crustaceans slug and worms play an important role in pollinating crops, pest control, decomposition and ensuring soil remains packed with nutrients, as well as water filtration.
...
"While we don't fully understand what the long-term impact of these declining numbers will be, currently we are in the potentially dangerous position of losing integral parts of ecosystems without knowing what roles they play within it.
"Prevention of further declines will require us to better understand what species are winning and losing in the fight for survival and from studying the winners, apply what we learn to improve conservation projects.
"We also need to develop predictive tools for modelling the impact of changes to the ecosystem so we can prioritise conservation efforts, working with governments globally to create supportive policy to reverse the worrying trends we are seeing."
Logged
Cause and effect are distant in time and space in complex systems, while at the same time there’s a tendency to look for causes near the events sought to be explained. Time delays in feedback in systems result in the condition where the long-run response of a system to an action is often different from its short-run response. — Ronald J. Ziegler
