I would like to hazard a guess as to why insect populations the world over are in precipitous decline. And as you may have guessed, it's all Humanity's fault. Bear with me...
Many explanations have been given for why there are less insects on Earth than there were decades ago. They range from pollution and pesticides to climate change and habitat loss. But there is one potential culprit the methodology of which is both simple and indisputable.
To begin with, insects at night are attracted to light. They evolved that way. And nearly two centuries since the invention of the light bulb, there has been an exponential increase in the amount of artificial light blanketing the globe from human habitations.
But there is more to the story of insects in nature. Spiders have also been known to seek out light sources and strategically construct their webs so as to benefit from the heightened insectoid traffic that it brings. Biologists have long since documented this clever tactic, as well as the bountiful diet it successfully gleans.
So then, putting two and two together: Humankind creates light sources, which insects are drawn to, where they fall prey to arachnids, ad infinitum, and the sum total of these eventualities is a decline in the overall number of insects upon Planet Earth.
This being a purely hypothetical explanation, I will leave it to the scientific community to either prove or disprove. It certainly sounds reasonable to me, but often times things which make intuitive sense are not always correct. The conjecture, however, has heretofore been made public.
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