Insects Are Disappearing, but Pesticides Aren't the Biggest Killer
Insect declines keep getting dismissed as exaggerated, but global data still points the same way; the real underrated culprit isn't agriculture — it's the pesticides ordinary people buy and spray themselves.
The video won't play here. Listen to the audio instead:
The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
The 70% decline was questioned, but the data keeps piling up
A decade ago, a European study covering 30 years of data showed insect total mass at one site had fallen 70%. Jessica herself raised doubts at the time: you can't directly compare heavy beetles with light mosquitoes, maybe it's just a shift in composition. But since then scientists have sampled repeatedly around the world, north to south, from the roots of the insect evolutionary tree to its top, and keep seeing the same pattern — a rate of decline never seen before. She concedes some pest cockroaches and some bee species are doing better, but the insects in the other column are "still astonishingly high, and increasing."
— Dr. Jessica WarePesticides aren't an agriculture problem, they're a your-backyard problem
The host assumed the answer would be agricultural chemicals, but Jessica turned the spotlight on ordinary people. Agricultural pesticide use is tightly regulated, with rules on how much and which kinds, and farmers don't want to spend more than they have to. But "you and I" can go out tonight and buy any pesticide, spray it wherever we like, with no regulation at all. She mentions the host ordering a pesticide from the US that is banned in Australia; her response was "wear gloves and a mask." She calls the overall picture what her colleague David Wagner terms "death by a thousand cuts" — drought, floods, fire, nitrogen deposition, land-use change, noise, light pollution, chemical pollution, invasive species — with no single cure.
— Dr. Jessica WareColony collapse was only ever the story of managed honeybees
The colony collapse disorder that caused panic a decade ago was really only about Apis mellifera, the European managed honeybee, not native North American species. They get trucked around in huge trailers, live under heavy stress, and on top of that face Varroa mites and neonicotinoid residues. Jessica's criticism: worrying only about this one domesticated, managed bee is like not worrying about any mammal going extinct except the cow we like to eat. What's actually needed is bee health as a whole, which is also why pollinator gardens have become popular — plant native species for all the pollinators in the environment.
— Dr. Jessica WareAmerica's biggest irrigated crop is lawn
NASA researchers estimated in 2005 that the US has more than 30 million acres of lawn, golf courses included, and by surface area lawn is the single largest irrigated crop in the country. Jessica's advice is concrete: shrink the lawn, keep the part you play on, stop mowing the edges, let it go wild; or just plant a pollinator garden. She did exactly that on the slope in front of her house, and got "garden shamed" by neighbors on the community social media, because a pollinator garden needs native plants of different heights and bloom times, and looks pretty rough for the first few years.
— Dr. Jessica WareSpotted lanternfly honeydew invites mold
The spotted lanternfly is a Hemiptera, its mouthparts a suction pump plus a straw that stabs into plants to drink sap; an all-liquid diet means its waste is basically sugar water, known as honeydew. This sticky honeydew rains down on the environment, and certain molds and fungi grow on it, potentially harming plants. They have more than 70 host plants, their preferred host being the equally invasive tree of heaven, but they'll also take maples, apples, and unfortunately grapes. As they spread west toward California's big grape-growing regions, that's the real worry.
— Dr. Jessica WareThe giant northern hornet was completely eradicated
The so-called murder hornet has been renamed the giant northern hornet, and Jessica finds the old name a bit stigmatizing. She calls this story a success case for human collaboration: a homeowner saw an unfamiliar insect on their tree and, instead of ignoring it, reported it; the specimen reached a colleague at the Smithsonian and was identified; the government put up funding, people on the West Coast mobilized immediately, found the location and cleared it. A piece of wood from that tree is now on display at the Smithsonian, because it held a batch of individuals. In December 2024, the USDA announced the hornet had been eradicated.
— Dr. Jessica WareCockroach milk is secreted through modified spiracles
Most cockroaches lay egg cases called oothika, which look like little coffee beans; when they hatch, all the larvae take a breath at once and pop the "little box" open. But cockroaches like diploptera punctata are ovoviviparous, and the mother feeds the embryos a milk-like secretion. Insects aren't mammals and have no nipples, so they modified spiracles to secrete this milk. Compositionally it's high in protein, not all that different from mammalian milk, and cloudy white in color. A few years ago European scientists tried to pitch it as the next superfood. The current problem: extracting the milk usually requires sacrificing the mother.
— Dr. Jessica WareFear of bugs is learned from your mother
Jessica says fear of insects is learned, not innate. A colleague at Rutgers ran an experiment: put babies and tarantulas together, and the babies aren't afraid on their own; but if the mother or primary caregiver shows disgust, the baby shows disgust too. Same with snakes and other animals. She uses her own two kids as an example: her daughter didn't start daycare until nearly one and has never been afraid of bugs; her son started daycare at six weeks, and the daycare teacher was afraid of bugs, screaming and swatting at the sight of them, so the son grew up afraid of bugs — even though his own mother isn't. Once this learned behavior forms, it's very hard to change.
— Dr. Jessica WareIn their own words · checked verbatim
And then they looked at the total weight, like the mass of the insects that they had collected in these different time points, and it had decreased by 70%.
Dr. Jessica Ware9:32
So it's my colleague, David Wagner, calls it death by a thousand cuts. You know, there's not one stressor that you could just be the panacea. You fix that and insight declines over. There's all of these little pieces that together are just too much.
Dr. Jessica Ware20:00
And I think a bigger issue, to be honest, isn't necessarily the agricultural industry's pesticide use, although that is a huge volume. But it's us. Like, it's the average person, you and I.
Dr. Jessica Ware21:04
It would be like getting, not worrying about any mammals going extinct and only worrying about a cow, right? About the cow that we like to eat, right?
Dr. Jessica Ware24:13
It took the person, the homeowner saying, hey, I don't recognize this. Yes. Notifying someone in the scientific community, getting the funding, because that was also an important part of the story is that the government supported this action.
Dr. Jessica Ware32:31
It's your parents, man. If you like, this one time that you could blame your mom, it's now, right? Like that's what the research shows. It's a learned behavior.
Dr. Jessica Ware37:36
They're very, very smart, even though they don't have a brain. Absolutely. Make us fall in love with insects. Insects have clusters of ganglia, but they can do very complex tasks.
Dr. Jessica Ware40:45
Figures
| Decline in total insect mass at one European site | 70% | 9:32 |
| Insect evolutionary history | about 400 million years | 10:35 |
| US lawn area (including golf courses) | more than 30 million acres | 24:13 |
| Number of spotted lanternfly host plants | more than 70 | 29:25 |
| Single wing length of the giant dragonfly Meganerity | 37 centimeters | 3:12 |
Glossary
- colony collapse disorder
- The phenomenon of managed honeybee colonies suddenly dying off en masse, mainly affecting European honeybees.
- Varroa mite
- An invasive mite that parasitizes bees and harms colonies.
- neonicotinoid
- A class of pesticides with negative effects on bees and other pollinating insects.
- pollinator garden
- A garden planted with native species to provide habitat for all kinds of pollinating insects.
- oothika
- The egg cases laid by cockroaches, shaped like little coffee beans.
- spiracles
- The openings on an insect's body surface used for breathing; certain cockroaches modified them to secrete milk.
How to listen
Founders and investors watching ecology, agriculture, food safety and urban policy; engineers who want to understand how regulatory blind spots create systemic risk.
The dragonfly penis anatomy and gold-coating segment (roughly 5:19–8:23) can be skipped — pure spectacle.