Where have all the bugs gone?

Yes, Friday Night Lights two weeks ago was swarmed by moths and crickets. That was due to unseasonably warm and unstable weather, even for the end of late summer in North Texas. The weather wasn't normal, nor was seeing that many bugs.

More and more research over the past few years indicates that more and more insects are disappearing from our world, especially in developed areas.

Now, a lot of this research has at least mild "anecdote" problems. Even when bugs/square centimeter are being done on a particular patch of land, we don't always have a control vs. 10 years ago on that same patch of land, same time of year. Even if there are cases when we do that, it's tough to control for different weather (not climate, down wingnuts and more on that in a minute).

Some research doesn't even have that degree of control.

Nonetheless, many scientists and philosophers of science related to this accept that there is a moderate to large degree of truth behind this.

We still don't know why. I'll tackle that more, too

I'm first adding my purely anecdotal, longitudinal observations.

Like many other non-scientists who have noted this, I've seen fewer and fewer bugs on my windshield over the years. And, the rate of decline seems to be decreasing.

I have spent 13 of the past 21 years within 100 miles of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and another three years in North Central Texas, just a little bit out of that circle to the south.

It's bug area. Mild winter, warm spring and fall, warm to hot summer, fairly high humidity, lots of lakes, etc.

In the summer, in years and years past, during their namesake month, June bugs coated the windshields of night drivers, especially in rural parts of the area I describe. Moths did so throughout the summer months. Especially in later summer, grasshoppers and crickets might make a late additional late afternoon addition.

No more.

That critter at left was a friendly rider from a county road, then on to a farm road, then on a brief stretch of U.S. highway that I tried not to travel too fast, on my driver's window. (Background scuzz is old tinted window film with bits of separation, glue, etc.)

I don't think a grasshopper that big has hit my windshield, or either of my headlight shields, the whole summer.

I think, on memory, I've probably only had a few like that in the past four or five years. Moths are more an irritant than a real problem.

So why?

Is climate change on the heat side screwing up insect gestation stages?

Is climate change on the heavier and more intermittent rain screwing up insect egg laying?

Are farm insecticides causing too much damage beyond farm and field?

Some combination of all of the above?

Other factors?

Yes, possibly other factors. The Guardian suggests light pollution is one.

Other factors  plus one or more of the original three listed possible causes?

Will we soon be aping Pete Seeger?

Where have all the insects gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the insects gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the insects gone?
Farms have killed them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

WE have killed them every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?

==

Not for a long time, perhaps. Science notes we've killed an estimated 3 billion birds in North America since the 1970s, although those numbers and what they mean may have been both overstated and massaged.