Researcher Bashar Ibrahim analyses the threat faced by insects around the world
- Written by a Guest Writer
While many people see insects as pests, cooler heads know that they are essential parts of the ecosystem and the food chain. Without insects, many of the comforts humans enjoy would not be possible.
Bashar Ibrahim is a biological researcher who has done extensive study on insects and their survivability into the future. Insects can become extinct relatively quickly, and they often go unnoticed when compared to larger species we know and love.
However, protecting inspect species is important, and researchers like Bashar Ibrahim are passionate about making sure biodiversity remains intact. Recent issues like diseases affecting bee populations en masse have raised concerns that other insect species are also in threat.
In researching the ultimate fate of insects on planet earth, Bashar Ibrahim and his team have had to make use of thousands of data points. These data points have been collected for a period of several years at the various monitoring sites that have been erected.
Many of the findings have shown a decrease in abundance and variety of insect species in different areas, but a lot of them showed no major changes. Overall, things do not seem as bad for insects as some make out, but that does not mean humans can be complacent in our responsibility to protect them
The question of whether or not there is a major overall decline in insect abundance and diversity is a difficult one to answer. Bashar Ibrahim asserts that people have nothing to fear about insects disappearing in large droves and an uncontrollable rate. He says that “we can’t afford to ignore the small issues that we do identify, but we should not start to panic either,”.
The research notes that some insects that are directly relied on by humans (such as bees) are unarguably in decline in some areas. The regions of North America and Europe are the worst affected in terms of bee populations being affected by disease and other environmental factors leading to their decline at an alarming rate.
Bashar Ibrahim says that the things humans are doing to try and help insect populations, such as using more narrowly targeted insecticides in agricultural, could be starting to have positive effects on a large scale that is hard to see at this stage.
Certainly, issues like climate change are going to be one of the biggest culprits when it comes to the decline of insect species. The delicate ecosystem of the planet is being put under stress by issues resulting from the process of global warming, and this naturally has very alarming results.
When insect species are negatively impacted, all other species are negatively impacted too. If someone low in the food chain like insects becomes extinct, then it will have a ripple effect throughout the rest of the food chain and cause starvation of species that eat insects.
There will be more competition around the food sources that remain, and Bashar Ibrahim’s tweet is concerned that humans aren’t prepared for if and when something like that happens. He and his team are passionate about studying the health of insect species so that the rest of humanity does not have to deal with the negative impact of a world without insects.
As you can see, the work of researchers like Bashar Ibrahim is very important for a multitude of reasons. Ultimately, humans can only survive on earth is they take care of the other species they share the planet with, and the insect is undoubtedly a huge part of that particular equation no matter how you look at it.