[brianlweiner]

Is it not possible to breed insects to try and replace some portion of the natural base population? Obviously other changes causing the population loss would also have to occur (e.g more responsible use of insecticides, less reliance on monoculture agriculture) - but insects are pretty good at reproducing so I'd think this is at least something we could try and ameliorate.

[gambler]

This is a problem likely caused by humans trying to manage too much in nature. Does it really sound reasonable to respond by taking over the working of even larger chunk of nature?

I think a much more reasonable approach would be to scale down pesticide use, scale down our overall biomass footprint by reducing meat consumption and scale down anything that involves cutting down "wild" trees or "re-purposing" forest landmass.

[akiselev]

We may already be so deep in the uncanny valley of geoengineering, so to speak, that we're past the point of no return and our only chance for survival is to take control of the unintented consequences of human civilization with intentional large scale action. At this point, the losses we've seen so far and our predictions seem so bad that it may be worth the risk of even more damage to gain valuable experience in geoengineering that could be eventually used to turn our planet around.

[dmitriid]

> Is it not possible to breed insects to try and replace some portion of the natural base population

It is possible. If you recreate habitats necessary for breeding of each of the hundreds of thousands of insect species.

[jly]

Insects are incredibly successful reproducers - they don't need our help there.

What they need is more safe connected habitat. Given that, the numbers will rebound to previous levels.

[beauzero]

My fear in this is ..."unless they aren't incredibly successful reproducers"? My fear is that we have damaged their reproductive mechanisms, not their habitat, or a short term poisoning.

I hope for your hypothesis...but fear of the consequences makes me want to look at all of the data.

[jly]

That's an interesting point and one I haven't considered or seen any significant research on.

My gut take is that insects will be fine and would likely return to previous densities given a reduction in pesticide use and restoration of habitat. They reproduce frequently and in large numbers, accelerating natural evolutionary processes. There is no chemical control agent that insects haven't demonstrated resistance and adaptation to, given enough exposure time. History has also shown us that arthropods are the most successful animals of all time, emerging mostly unscathed through major climate shifts and extinction events that have decimated other animals. Insects have been flying on earth for over 400 million years (some today in almost the same form as then) and will likely be here long after we're gone.

[zenkat]

Natural selection will do that far more efficiently than we ever could artificially. Insects have a rapid reproductive cycle, and create huge numbers of spawn each cycle.

[esarbe]

I'm afraid the poisons (aka pesticides) that we spew into the environment have a quicker 'evolutionary' rate than insects...

Not doing anything will not prevent our ecosystem from crumbling beneath our feet.