\n<\/p>\n
Scientists have used Met Office radar data to track the trillions of insects flying above the UK for the first time, revealing a concerning decline in nocturnal species.<\/p>\n
The team repurposed data from the UK\u2019s network of 15 weather surveillance radars, which scan the sky hundreds of times a day.<\/p>\n
Between 2014 and 2021, daytime insect numbers remained relatively stable or even increased in southern regions, but night-time-airborne insects declined overall, especially in the far north, the analysis suggests.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of the first studies to show how day- and night-flying insects are being affected differently, and how their habitats influence those patterns,\u201d said Dr Mansi Mungee, who led the work as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leeds, and is now based at Azim Premji University in India. \u201cIt\u2019s a crucial step toward understanding where to focus conservation efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Modern radar works by sending out pulses of microwaves that bounce off precipitation and other airborne obstacles. By measuring the time it takes for the signal to return, its intensity and other features, radar can determine the location, number and size of insects in the air.<\/p>\n
Their results show an average of 11.2tn insects flying between 500 and 700 metres above the ground during daytime hours and just over 5tn at night. Insect abundance was higher in areas with woodlands, grasslands, and even urban areas \u2013 but dropped in intensively farmed regions and where artificial lighting was high.<\/p>\n
Birds, bats and insects were first spotted as mysterious blips on British military surveillance during the second world war, with radar operators so mystified that the puzzling signals were initially known as \u201cangels\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the intervening decades, as radar was co-opted for weather forecasting, Met Office scientists have developed sophisticated algorithms to remove the \u201cbiological scatter\u201d caused by swarms of insects and migrating birds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019d been throwing out heaps of biodiversity data,\u201d said Dr Christopher Hassall, an animal biology researcher at the University of Leeds and co-author of the research. \u201cWe realised this data could potentially be extracted and that it could be a treasure trove of information rather than an irritation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, the insect mapping team discarded the other half of the data \u2013 the rain and clouds and weather \u2013 to reveal the motions of insects in the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the insects are active flyers, some are just following the thermals,\u201d said Dr Ryan Neely, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the University of Leeds. \u201cIt\u2019s an amazing way to visualise what the air is doing. It\u2019s really beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
The current study focused on overall numbers rather than how many different species were present, which is often the focus of citizen science monitoring of insect biodiversity.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Nocturnal insects, such as moths, showed an overall decline in the past four years, driven by declines in northern regions. Artificial light at night, already known to disrupt insect behaviour, may be contributing to their decline, the scientists concluded.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could be a blip, but there\u2019s also a shift in the way we are lighting the night, in terms of the types of bulbs and car headlights getting brighter,\u201d said Hassall.<\/p>\n During both day and night, there was a decline of northern species and an increase of insects in the south, which is likely to be linked to the climate crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cThe northern species will be declining because it\u2019s getting too warm and too dry for them,\u201d said Hassall. \u201cThey will be replaced by southern species, but there\u2019s a lag.\u201d<\/p>\n Cities appeared to have higher insect numbers than homogenous agricultural land, which is likely to offer less diverse habitat. The findings are published in the journal Global Change Biology.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scientists have used Met Office radar data to track the trillions of insects flying above the UK for the first time, revealing a concerning decline in nocturnal species. The team repurposed data from the UK\u2019s network of 15 weather surveillance radars, which scan the sky hundreds of times a day. Between 2014 and 2021, daytime<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[9401,5575,18041,18042,572,188,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-30848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-decline","9":"tag-insects","10":"tag-nightflying","11":"tag-radar","12":"tag-reveals","13":"tag-study","14":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}