"Cabbage moths, corn borers and other plant-eating insects crucial to ecosystems have declined dramatically in East Asia over the past two decades — along with dragonflies and other predator insects that eat them, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
A team of scientists at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing spent 18 years tracking the migration patterns of millions of insects belonging to nearly 100 species. The scientists were not just looking at how the abundance of a single type of bug changed over time. They also wanted to understand how change for one affects others that relate to it through the food chain.
They found that overall levels of insects flying through a key migration corridor between China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan declined nearly 8 percent, and summer levels of predator insects went down almost 20 percent. The drop in plant-eating bugs contributed to the decrease in predator insects, reducing their ability to act as a control at the top of the food chain."
Meaghan Tobin reports for the Washington Post February 3, 2023.
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