Insects are still disappearing - and there are hundreds of reasons why

Step outside on a warm summer evening, and you’ll likely notice something missing – fewer buzzing bees, fluttering butterflies, or humming beetles. Across the globe, insect numbers are crashing.

These small creatures may not grab headlines like tigers or elephants, but they play vital roles in pollination, decomposition, and supporting ecosystems. Without them, life on Earth would unravel in quiet but devastating ways.

The concern isn’t new, but recent efforts to grasp the scale and causes of insect decline are painting a clearer, more complex picture.

A research team at Binghamton University, State University of New York (SUNY), has taken a sweeping look at how scientists explain this crisis. Their work doesn’t just identify the usual suspects – it shows a deeply interconnected web of causes, some obvious, many ignored, and all urgent.

Insect are disappearing fast

In 2017, a shocking study revealed a 75% drop in insect populations in under 30 years. That single paper stirred a global scientific response, triggering waves of new research.

Scientists began investigating the reasons behind this collapse, with studies emerging across fields from agriculture to climate science.

Despite this burst of attention, understanding the full picture has remained elusive. Many studies focus on specific regions, stressors, or insect groups.

This fragmented view has made it difficult to see how the various factors combine or overlap.

Linked causes of insect population loss

To capture the breadth of expert opinion, the Binghamton researchers examined over 175 scientific review papers. These reviews included more than 500 hypotheses about why insects are disappearing. The team read and analyzed them all, building a network of over 3,000 linked ideas.

“It’s really hard to talk to everybody about what everyone thinks. And so instead of getting 600 people into a room, we decided to take an approach where we read every paper that’s either a review or a meta-analysis,” said Christopher Halsch, a post-doctoral researcher at Binghamton and lead author of the paper.

This network approach allowed them to trace how one cause leads to another. For instance, agriculture may lead to pesticide use, which harms insects. Urban sprawl might increase pollution and fragment habitats.

Every driver connects to others, forming a dense mesh of stressors that influence insect survival.

Agriculture: The dominant driver

When the team looked at which drivers showed up most often, agricultural intensification topped the list. This includes land-use changes, monocultures, and pesticide applications. These practices reduce natural habitats and expose insects to toxic chemicals.

But Halsch and his colleagues caution against seeing this as a simple ranking. Agricultural practices often interact with other forces, amplifying the damage.

For example, land cleared for farming may also face climate pressures or pollution. One driver rarely acts alone.

The network map shows that stressors don’t exist in isolation. They create a feedback loop, where one issue triggers another. This interdependence complicates conservation, which often focuses on single threats or single species.

Climate pressures and disappearing insects

Among the other stressors, climate-related changes play a major role. Extreme precipitation, wildfires, rising temperatures, and seasonal shifts all affect insect life cycles, behavior, and habitats. But even within this broad category, complexity reigns.

Each climatic factor may worsen another threat. For example, hotter summers can increase pesticide use, while floods can destroy fragile habitats. These interactions mean that insects face stress from multiple fronts at once.

Despite the importance of these factors, many are still overlooked. The Binghamton study highlights that much of the scientific literature misses critical threats that aren’t easy to quantify or observe.

What the literature misses entirely

Perhaps the most startling finding was what the researchers didn’t find. Entire categories of known threats were nearly absent from the literature. Natural disasters, war zones, railways, and human intrusions – none appeared in any of the reviews examined.

“None of the papers mentioned natural disasters,” said Professor Eliza Grames, who was part of a recent study showing a 20% loss of butterflies in the United States.

“No papers looked at human intrusions and disturbance, or the effects of war on insects, or railroads.”

These threats are well known in biodiversity discussions. Yet, when it comes to insects, they vanish from view. This raises concerns about research blind spots and missed opportunities to address emerging challenges.

Studies mostly focus on bees and butterflies

Another problem is the overwhelming focus on bees and butterflies. These species are loved and easily recognized. They’re also valuable to agriculture, which means they attract research dollars and public support.

“Because people have focused so much on pollinators like bees and butterflies, we are limited in identifying conservation actions that benefit other insects,” said Grames.

This focus creates a loop. “Bees are agriculturally important and people care about them. So there is a lot of research priority towards funding research on bees. So you get this kind of feedback: if you prioritize research on bees, you learn more about bees,” said Halsch.

Meanwhile, countless other insects remain poorly understood and unprotected.

Towards a broader conservation vision

Focusing on well-known species risks missing the bigger picture. The vast majority of insects aren’t pollinators. Many play roles in soil health, pest control, and nutrient cycling. Ignoring them puts entire ecosystems at risk.

“One of the important points we’re trying to make in the paper is that conservation actions overly biased towards certain insects or certain stressors will likely be negative for many other insects,” said Halsch.

“If we focus too much on bees and butterflies and their conservation, we will miss a lot of other species, most of them in fact.”

The way forward, the researchers argue, is to adopt broader, more inclusive strategies. This means managing not just individual drivers, but their connections. It requires recognizing unseen threats and correcting biases in funding and focus.

The crisis of disappearing insects

Insects don’t inspire awe like whales or wolves. But their absence would mark the collapse of ecological foundations. This new research urges us to look beyond the familiar, to notice what the data – and our eyes – often miss.

By weaving together 3,000 hypotheses into a single map, the Binghamton team has made one thing clear: insect decline is a many-headed crisis.

Addressing this issue of disappearing insects will take more than targeted fixes. It will take a shift in how we view the smallest lives on Earth – and how much we’re willing to do to protect them.

The study is published in the journal BioScience.

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