Other scientists, using more conventional methods, have reported similar collapses everywhere from Puerto Rican jungles to nature reserves in Germany. Twenty years later, the results showed something deadly serious: Collisions with insects had declined 80 percent along the first roadway, and a staggering 97 percent along the second. When the ecologist Anders Pape Møller began systematically driving two Danish roads in 1996 and counting the windshield splats, many people dismissed his project as a lark. Now, we’re far more likely to watch those same landscapes pass by through unblemished glass, mile after empty mile. Entomologists call it “the windshield effect,” a relatable metric neatly summed up by a question: When was the last time you had to clean bug splatter from your windshield? This ritual was once an inevitable coda to any long drive. THE INSECT CRISIS: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World, by Oliver MilmanĪnyone with a car has gathered data on insect declines.
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