Overige insecten

Drs Henk Tennekes and Francisco Sanchez Bayo published this key study back in 2011 but it is vital that anyone involved in the bee deaths and neonics issue understands the KEY finding of this study. Since 1945, all pesticides were subjected to the LD50 Risk Assessment, by which scientists gradually increased the test dose fed to bees, until 50% of the bees died within 48 hours. Alternatively, they reduced the amount fed to bees until 50% survived after 48 hours. This established the LD50 dose (Lethal death 50%).

The proposed permit to use imidacloprid on shellfish beds recently came to my attention. The fact that imidacloprid is being sought as an alternative to carbaryl particularly caught my interest because I have been studying the toxic profile of the various insecticide classes as they relate to ecotoxicity for pollinators. As it turns out, carbaryl and imidacloprid are on the opposite ends of time-dependent toxicity scaling spectrum. I would urge regulators to look closely at the time-dependent nature of the toxicity of residual concentrations for these two chemicals.

A federal study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology shows smaller amounts of a common bug killer may be more harmful in Midwest streams than previously thought. The chemical compound bifenthrin is used to kill mosquitoes, aphids on crops, and ants and termites in households. But the insecticide also gets into waterways. USGS scientists evaluated the effects of bifenthrin on natural communities of stream invertebrates, such as mayflies and midges, using artificial streams.

Ganze Landstriche ohne bestäubende Insekten – in China schon heute Wirklichkeit. Dort müssen Bäume und Pflanzen bereits von Hand bestäubt werden, und in wenigen Jahren könnte es auch in Deutschland so weit sein. Denn neueste Forschungsergebnisse zeigen: Auch bei uns ist der Bestand von Wildbienen und anderen Insekten drastisch gesunken. Wenn dieser Trend sich fortsetze, so Experten, sterben sie in weniger als zehn Jahren aus.

The Curlew (Numenius arquata) is a bird in crisis. Since 2007 they have been red-listed by the IUCN due to their small and declining breeding population. There has been widespread declines all across Europe but it’s the populations in Ireland that are worst hit. Estimates put the decline of native breeding pairs to 86% over the last 25 years. There are only a few hundred breeding pairs left in the country. The Curlew is the largest of the European wading birds.

Als die amerikanische Biologin Rachel Carson vor mehr als 50 Jahren ihr Buch "Silent Spring" veröffentlichte, löste sie damit eine weltweite Bewegung gegen Pestizide wie das berüchtigte DDT aus. Damals standen viele Vogelarten kurz vor dem Aussterben, weil das Pflanzenschutzmittel ihre Eierschalen so dünnwandig machte, dass sie zerbrachen, wenn sich ein Vogel zum Brüten daraufsetzte. DDT wurde in vielen Ländern verboten, 1972 auch in Deutschland.

University of Wisconsin-Madison ecologists have played a key role in a petition filed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Friday seeking emergency Endangered Species Act protection for the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). The petition was written and signed by a national group of experts in conservation and ecology, including Waller and Tom Gibson of UW-Madison. The unique carnivorous plant captures flies and captivates nature lovers, but in the wild is found only in North Carolina and South Carolina.

It is the blizzard of moths that Michael McCarthy remembers most vividly. As a boy growing up in post-World II England, his family would take summer nighttime drives to the coast for holidays, and the car headlights and windshield would soon be so splattered with moths that they would have to stop to clean them off. "That phenomenon has gone. It’s disappeared,” says McCarthy. “It’s disappeared because there has been a horrendous crash in moth numbers in the U.K.”