Modern farming is causing many insect species to collapse

For decades, farming has chipped away at insect biodiversity, often in ways less obvious than bulldozing forests. Frequent mowing, pesticide use, and habitat loss converge to create a hostile landscape for countless insect species.

Now, a research team from the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) has thrown new light on just how severe the damage really is.

Insect decline in farmlands

In Bavaria, a team led by Professor Jörg Müller wanted to look past assumptions. From forests to farmland, the researchers studied 400 insect families. But they didn’t just count what they saw.

They used DNA metabarcoding – a technique that scans genetic material from environmental samples. Combined with precise statistical tools, this allowed the team to detect not only the insects themselves but also the hidden patterns in their decline.

The results, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, revealed a stark contrast between agricultural and near-natural habitats. What they found changes the story on insect loss – and sharpens its urgency.

Farming and insect diversity

The researchers used Malaise traps to catch insects from a range of environments. Farmland samples, surprisingly, gave the clearest data.

These landscapes, open and simplified, make it easier to catch and identify insect species. Yet even with this advantage, the results were grim.

After adjusting for how completely each sample captured the existing diversity, the researchers recorded a 44 percent decline in total insect species diversity on farmland.

This isn’t a seasonal dip. It’s a structural collapse, cutting across species lines. Farmland has become less of a home for insects and more of a barrier to their survival.

Unseen collapse in insects

Counting species wasn’t enough. The team introduced a new method to standardize how completely each habitat’s insect community had been sampled. That meant creating fair comparisons across very different environments.

They filtered out sequencing errors, focused on real trends in species presence, and sharpened the lens on insect biodiversity.

The method accounted for both how many different kinds of insects were present (taxonomic diversity) and how distantly related those insects were from one another (phylogenetic diversity).

What they saw was not just fewer insects – but fewer kinds of insect lineages, going back through evolutionary time.

Farming erases insect history

When insects disappear, ecosystems don’t just lose pollinators or prey. They lose deep genetic history. The JMU team found nearly a 30% reduction in evolutionary diversity in farmland insects.

This means entire branches of the insect family tree are vanishing – lineages shaped over millions of years, wiped away in a few decades. Such a loss affects ecosystem resilience, narrowing the genetic pool that might once have buffered against future environmental shifts.

“This study underscores the urgent need for biodiversity-sensitive land use. A continued decline in insect diversity could have far-reaching consequences for the health and stability of ecosystems,” stated Dr. Mareike Kortmann, the study’s lead author.

Biodiversity crisis in agriculture

Forests and semi-natural habitats still support varied insect life. They offer shade, cover, and food webs rich with interactions. Agricultural lands, in contrast, have become biodiversity hotspots in reverse. Instead of buzzing life, they teem with absence.

Dominant insect species – those you’d expect to be hardy survivors – are dropping fastest in taxonomic diversity.

Meanwhile, rare species face a deeper erasure. Their entire evolutionary lineages are disappearing. Farmland is not just hostile to insects. It’s selectively erasing their past, present, and future.

Action needed for insects

This study introduced a powerful new toolkit for understanding insect decline and extinction. By combining genetic analysis, statistical rigor, and evolutionary context, researchers can now draw a clearer map of biodiversity loss and fragmentation.

But the view it reveals is bleak. Knowing more means little if it doesn’t drive action. The researchers call for focused conservation efforts – especially in farmlands where both common and rare insects edge closer to disappearance.

They have made the warning unmistakable. The question now: will we change course before the silence spreads?

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B Biological Sciences.

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