The sad realization when writing about historical settings
Before I fell back into writing fanfictions, I wrote mainly originals, most of the time in Urban Fantasy or SciFi settings. And there is this one thing that I just did not have to think about.
But then came 2022, and I started mainly writing fanfiction again. And through a twist of fate my main fandoms ended up being medieval - both with fantasy worlds like the Forgotten Realms, and just the real normal medieval times (aka Castlevania).
It started when I was writing the Castlevania fics. Specifically the fics being set in winter. Because it was this very obvious thing.
I wrote about it last year: Over here in Germany, in the area where I am living, we did not have a real winter since 2006. 18 years ago. There are young adults, that can vote in the election next year, that will never have actually lived through a real winter. Sure, a couple of years back - in the winter of 2020/2021 - we actually had about several weeks of snow that remained. But outside of it? Sure, it will snow on a couple of days per winter, but the snow will be melted by the next morning.
But when writing the medieval setting, I realized at some point: "Wait. This was pre-climate change. In a mountainous area to boot. They will have impassable paths for weeks on end!" And it was kinda depressing.
But then there was the other realization. Imagining summer in this medieval setting. And I imagine. And then this little voice in my mind goes: "Add more insects."
I stop a beat: "What?"
"More insects. This is medieval. It was before we killed all the insects. There are insects everywhere. Beetles, and flies, and butterflies, and mosquitoes, and grasshoppers, and..."
I do remember those summers when I was a kid. When we drove in the car and the windshield was smashed with dead bugs. When I was running around through the forest and at times would accidentally breathe those bastards in.
And now I am thinking about that a lot, whenever I write those characters being outside. I do not always bring it in, but I think about it. About how nice it must be to live in a world that was not fucked over like that.
Sorry. I am depressed. I know. Fuck climate change. Fuck capitalism, I guess.
Originally posted on my website at https://rebeccalexa.com/why-we-need-to-care-about-insects/
Some months back a study was released that demonstrates just how damaging climate change is to insects, particularly those in tropical areas. Warming temperatures cause insects to die from overheating and dehydration, kills off their food sources, and lowers their fertility rates to dangerous levels. Moreover, changes in climate affect insect phenology, the timing of when they hatch, migrate, breed, and so forth.
And because insects are so small, they’re often disproportionately affected by many of these problems. As ectotherms, they rely on the air around them to regulate their body temperatures; their small mass means they lose heat faster than larger animals, and can be overloaded with heat much more quickly. Tropical insects are especially at risk from major fluctuations in temperature because they are adapted to a relatively narrow temperature range.
Gray spruce looper moth (Caripeta divisata)
But the problem goes far beyond the tropics, and we are in the middle of an insect apocalypse. This problem often flies under the radar of those who are not already aware of invertebrate conservation. While a few insects, such as monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) and domestic honey bees (Apis mellifera), find themselves in the press on a regular basis, most species don’t have large fan clubs. Some of my favorite insects include the white-tipped ctenucha moth (Ctenucha rubroscapus), the velvet snail-eating beetle (Scaphinotus velutinus), and the black-tailed bumblebee (Bombus melanopygus), none of which are insects you’re likely to find making the headlines.
To be fair, there are a lot of insect species out there, so it would be hard to feature every single one individually. But we already face the problem that many people simply just don’t see why we need to worry about fewer bugs around. Last year I wrote an article about how search engines tend to produce exterminator sites at the top of results for various insects, and while some of that is no doubt due to advertising-oriented algorithms, they do reflect a widespread demand for extermination services that isn’t matched by more positive attention to these little animals.
Much has been said among entomologists, ecologists, and other professionals about why we need to be concerned about the drastic drop in the numbers of many insect species, and I’ve written about it as well. I could reiterate what would happen if we lost our pollinators (and also how to save them!) or the crucial role insect detritivores play in reducing diseases and keeping the food web cycling along. And I am still a champion for mosquitoes and other unpopular insects.
Green stink bug (Chinavia hilaris)
But these things always bear repeating. It may be that nine out of every ten organisms on this planet is an insect. Insects play an incredible number of ecological roles, from ecosystem engineers to pollinators to food sources and much more. Without them, ecosystems around the planet would collapse entirely.
I could certainly take the self-interested route and emphasize that fully one-third of our food relies on insects and other pollinators. I might also point out that insect detritivores help nourish the soil needed for everything from food crops to timber. While terrestrial insects and other arthropods only make up about a fifth of the amount of global biomass as their marine counterparts, they still represent a natural sink that holds about 200 million tons of carbon at any given time.
But our anthropocentric worldview rarely considers the intrinsic value of insects simply for existing. We’re constantly weighing and measuring their worth based on our biases and values. We divide them into “good” or “bad” insects: good insects are those that do things we like, like pollination or looking pretty, while bad insects are the ones that chew on our homes and plants or which bite or sting us when threatened or seeking food. For a lot of people, any insect beyond maybe a butterfly is a reason to say “Ewww, gross!” I’ve even seen this widespread among self-professed nature lovers, whether they have a true entemophobia or not, though there may be an evolutionary reason for this seemingly disproportionate reaction.
So consider this yet another attempt to change opinions about insects. I can’t cure entemophobia, but I can at least get people thinking more critically about personal and societal attitudes toward insects. I hope to get people to realize that widespread use of pesticides and other garden/agricultural chemicals–which has increased fifty-fold in twenty-five years–is driving the loss of so many insects. I’ve mentioned before that habitat loss is the single biggest cause of species endangerment and extinction, and that goes for insects, too. And, of course, the study mentioned at the start of this article is just one highlighting the increasing impact climate change has on insects worldwide.
Metric Paper Wasp (Polistes metricus)
Let me wrap this up on a bright note: word is getting out. There is a lot more awareness than there was twenty years ago, and there’s more nuance than we had in the early “save the (domesticated European honey) bees” campaigns. More people are ditching pesticides and other garden chemicals unless absolutely needed, and regenerative agricultural practices that use fewer chemicals overall are gaining ground. And while numerous organizations are increasing awareness of insect conservation, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation–the oldest organization dedicated solely to invertebrates–is still going strong.
And you can help spread the word, too. Share this article with others, and some of the resources and organizations linked throughout. Consider your own relationship to the native insects in the world around you, and whether you might make their lives a little easier. And remember that sometimes it is the smallest of things that have the greatest importance in such a massive system as an entire living planet.
Did you enjoy this post? Consider taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes or hiring me for a guided nature tour, checking out my other articles, or picking up a paperback or ebook I’ve written! You can even buy me a coffee here!
Ongoing habitat loss and the spread of invasive species and non-native insect diseases are also taking their toll.
Excerpt from this story from Truthout:
It should thus be of concern to all of us that insects are in decline. Every year there are slightly fewer butterflies, fewer bumblebees — fewer of almost all the myriad little beasts that make the world go round. Estimates vary and are imprecise, and many insects, particularly those in the tropics, are simply not being systematically counted by anyone, but the data we do have overwhelmingly suggest a pattern of decline. For example, in Germany, the biomass of flying insects fell by 76 percent in the 27 years to 2016. In the U.S., monarch butterfly numbers have fallen by 80 percent in 25 years. In the U.K., butterflies have halved in abundance since 1976, when I was 11 years old. These changes have happened in our lifetimes, on our watch, and they continue to accelerate.
My youngest son is now 11; he is growing up in a world where butterflies are half as common as they were when I was his age. How many butterflies will his children ever see?
The famous American biologist Paul Ehrlich likened loss of species from an ecological community to randomly popping out rivets from the wing of a plane. Remove one or two and the plane will probably be fine. Remove 10, or 20 or 50, and at some point, that we are entirely unable to predict, there will be a catastrophic failure, and the plane will fall from the sky. In his analogy, insects are the rivets that hold ecosystems together.
What is driving the decline of insects? There are many factors, but clearly the industrialization of farming, particularly the move toward large-scale monoculture cropping dependent on a blizzard of pesticides is playing a major role. In 1962, three years before I was born, Rachel Carson warned us in her book Silent Spring that we were doing terrible damage to our planet. She would weep to see how much worse it has become. The problems with pesticides and fertilizers Carson highlighted have become far more acute. Some of these new pesticides, such as neonicotinoids, are thousands of times more toxic to insects than any that existed in Carson’s day. The U.S. in particular has an especially gung-ho attitude to pesticides, with U.S. farmers accounting for nearly 20 percent of all global use. About one-quarter of the pesticides used in the U.S. are now banned in the European Union due to concerns over risks to human or environmental health. The U.S. allows several pesticides now banned in China and Brazil, neither of which is famed for its sensitive approach to environmental protection.
Freshwater arthropods trended upward, while terrestrial ones declined. But the study’s decades of data are spotty.
Taking a big view of the so-called Insect Apocalypse finds some possible winners among the losers, plus a lot of things we don’t know yet.
Overheated end-times terms have popped up during the last few years conveying fear that the bounty of Earth’s butterflies, beetles, bees and many other insects has started slipping away. The worry is not just about species likely to go extinct. Even species that will probably survive might be shrinking in population so much that their skimpy numbers no can longer fill their current roles in ecosystems.
Now a new look at insect abundance, slanted toward North America and Europe, hints that freshwater residents are overall increasing. Data mostly gathered since the 1960s suggests that beetles, mayflies, dragonflies and other creatures that spend a good part of their lives in water have increased about 11 percent per decade, says a study in Science April 24. In contrast, land-dwelling insects shrank in abundance by about 9 percent per decade, the study says.
“Insects will not disappear,” says coauthor Roel van Klink, an entomologist at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig. He and colleagues found, however, “a lot of reason for concern” overall, he says.
When insects seem so numerous and ubiquitous it's difficult to conceive of a time when they might not be around any more.....but that's the scenario already unfolding in some (but not all) places around the world. So for this month's Walkhighlands article I'm giving a very personal take on the recent news about insect populations crashing around the world. The so-called 'insect apocalypse' and why it scares me - just click on the link.
Something I don't go into in the article (cos I ran out of space) is what insects mean to me, beyond their importance to all life on this planet. I never used to pay them any attention other than swatting the things I didn't like, but in these more enlightened days they are the absolute highlight of my wildlife encounters and I avoid killing anything if I can help it. Even clegs!
Finding that ruby-tailed wasp (pictured) on the window sill of my flat at Mar Lodge Estate last year was more exciting and memorable than any eagle encounter I've had. Green tiger beetles (also pictured) are more beautiful to me than most birds in this country. And seeing my very first poplar hawk-moth last year, one of our largest, was every bit as thrilling as seeing my first otter. I know most folk aren't particularly fond of the insect world but it is sooooo fascinating, sooooo diverse and yes, sooooo beautiful that I'd recommend to anyone that they should give insects a chance ;-)
Museum educators who helped interpret We Are Nature: Living in the Anthropocene during the ground-breaking exhibition’s ten-month run now pay close attention to explanations of Anthropocene-related themes. When exceptional examples are encountered, we feel compelled to share them.
Recently, in a New York Times article about how a decades-long decline in insect populations is now causing alarm, author Brooke Jarvis addresses the apparent invisibility of environmental degradation that occurs over generations.
She presents the term “shifting baseline syndrome” for the phenomenon, and by way of memorable example summarizes the results of an unusual research study from 2008.
Marine biologist Loren McClenachan, of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, quantified the decline of fish associated with Florida Keys coral reefs by examining historic photos, 1956 – 2007, of the sportfishing customers and catches of three long established charter boat companies.
Although smiles remained consistent across the decades, prize fish got considerably smaller. As Jarvis notes in her summary, “The world never feels fallen, because we grow accustomed to the fall.”
For more details, check out Brooke Jarvis’ full article, The Insect Apocalypse Is Here.
Patrick McShea works in the Education and Visitor Experience department of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.
A tweetstorm from when that "Insect Apocalypse!!1!1!" paper was getting passed around just reminded me just how garbage all those articles about that paper were cause as people later discovered, the methodology for it was actually kinda garbo?
Like, it wasn't actually a study on insect population decline, it was just a paper that complied 40 years of publicaly available papers where their database search parameters where "survey", "insect" and "decline" and the authors themselves hadn't actually done any research themselves into insect populations.
