” We have seen very dramatic declines locally, even in Sweden. But it does not mean that you can scale up the results to the national level, ” says Markus Franzén, insektsforskare at linnaeus university.
He has studied the butterfly and nattfjärilsfaunan on the Kullaberg nature reserve in Skåne, sweden. There was a disastrous decline, almost half (45 per cent) of species of butterflies had disappeared since the 1950s.
in the new scare, which the researchers based their findings on 73 studies that have been conducted over the last 30 years. They concluded that the insect biomass in the world is now decreasing by 2.5 per cent per year. In the worst case, 40 percent of all species die out this century.
the Problem is that almost all studies have been conducted in Europe and the united states, often in pure agricultural environments. No study has been done in tropical Africa, or the Amazon, or Indonesia.
– There is a huge lack of data. The lack of knowledge is huge, ” says Markus Franzén.
be careful with how one interprets the results.
– the Situation is likely to be serious in many regions and countries, but we know very little about the situation at large, ” he says.
He points out that the decline in the Peninsula was partly due to that the man had laid out a golf course in the middle of the reserve. Before they built the golf course consisted of the environment of the flowering meadow. When the meadows disappeared, disappeared also the butterflies.
– Fixed the same species are left on the other sides. It is not so that we can say that the many different species of insect have been reduced by half in the whole country on the basis of the study on the Peninsula. We see instead that some species are expanding in the country, and at the national level, it is good for quite a lot. Most likely, they benefit from the climate become warmer in Sweden, ” he says.
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