The largest class of animals in the Earth is seriously degraded

Insects are the class of animals with the largest number, most of the earth. Some scientists estimate there could be up to 30 million insect species.

However, today, it is this mass that is one of the threats of alarming decline in insects.

"Maybe up to 30 million species"

Scientists spray pesticides into plants to catch insects in Peru - (Photo: Mark Moffett).

35 years ago, Terry Erwin, an American biologist, conducted an experiment to estimate the number of current insects. By using a special medicine, Terry can dispel all insects that live in the leaf canopy of the Luehea seemannii tropical plant in the Panama rainforest.

As a result, Terry discovered about 1,200 different species of which most of them are hard-winged, many of which are new to scientists. Terry estimates that there are 163 specific species found only in the Luehea seemannii.

Since then, Terry calculated that if there are about 50,000 species of tropical plants, and each tree has 163 species of peculiar insects that live, multiply up to 8 million species, most of which are hard-winged families living in the canopy.

Because the hard wings make up 40% of the arthropod industry, calculate the number of burning feet up to 20 million. In addition, when calculating the number of species living under the forest canopy, that number could reach 30 million.

This result shocked Terry and set a debate about the practice of entomologists.

However, Terry's analysis points to two things that are not controversial. One is that there are many more species than the statistic of about 10 million species. Secondly, insects are the richest growing animals on earth.

However, due to the rapid development in the process of industrialization and urbanization of humans, insects are severely reduced.

Terry Erwin's insect collection is on display in Washington, USA - (Photo: Frans Lanting).

Challenges from humankind

Insects play an important role in the ecosystem, being the most important pollinators for crops, especially for fruit trees. Moreover, insects are links to thousands of food chains.

Therefore their disappearance causes a decline in numbers in many other species, such as birds (the number of birds in the fields of England has decreased by half since 1970), so gray chickens (live on food insects) or flies (down to 95%) .

There are even species like extinct red-backed cypress cypress in the UK in the 1990s due to lack of food that are big beetles.

In Germany, a report published in The Guardian said the number of insects flying here has decreased ¾ since 1989 .

Today, without statistics, we can still see the decline of insects. For example, before driving long distances through the suburbs, insects often bump into you or your car glasses. But now, this phenomenon is not much anymore.

Scientists have identified two subjective causes for this problem: one in culture, one in science. Culturally, people often do not pay much attention to insects (except bees and butterflies). Even for nature lovers, they tend to learn about grass flowers, birds or animals.

Moths are one of the most severely degraded species - (Photo: Dan Kitwood).

Secondly, due to very large numbers, insects cannot be explored and calculated in full quantity. For example, in the UK today there are about 24,500 species of insects, of which about 1,800 species of aphids, 4,000 hard-winged species, 7,000 species of flies and 7,000 species of bees, ants . however many of them are unknown.

In particular, an indisputable cause, it is human. Agricultural use of too much chemicals killed many insects, and soiled for a long time.

So what future for insects in the 21st century? According to The Guardian, the situation will be worse because we are facing the problem of providing food to feed 9 billion people worldwide in 2050 and up to 12 billion people by 2100.

This pressure can cause people to kill more insects and extinct more species.