World’s food supply under ‘severe threat’ from loss of biodiversity

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Admin

Plants, insects and organisms crucial to food production in steep decline, says UN

The world’s capacity to produce food is being undermined by humanity’s failure to protect biodiversity, according to the first UN study of the plants, animals and micro-organisms that help to put meals on our plates.

The stark warning was issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation after scientists found evidence the natural support systems that underpin the human diet are deteriorating around the world as farms, cities and factories gobble up land and pump out chemicals.

World’s largest bee, missing for 38 years, found in Indonesia

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Admin

Biologists discover single female Wallace’s giant bee inside a termites’ nest in a tree

As long as an adult thumb, with jaws like a stag beetle and four times larger than a honeybee, Wallace’s giant bee is not exactly inconspicuous.

But after going missing, feared extinct, for 38 years, the world’s largest bee has been rediscovered on the Indonesian islands of the North Moluccas.

Plummeting insect numbers ‘threaten collapse of nature’

Posted on February 10, 2019 by Admin

Exclusive: Insects could vanish within a century at current rate of decline, says global review

Why are insects in decline, and can we do anything about it?

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.