Ninety-year trends reveal sharpest insect declines in the mid-twentieth century
Felix Neff · Kurt Bollmann · Yannick Chittaro · Martin M. Gossner · Felix Herzog · Fränzi Korner-Nievergelt · Glenn Litsios · Carlos Martínez-Núñez · Marco Moretti · Emmanuel Rey · Andreas Sanchez · Eva Knop
期刊Nature Ecology & Evolution / Nat Ecol Evol
类型Article
发表2026-06-02 (online)
卷期页10(6): 1103-1113
收录2026-10-09
被浏览…
关键词insect declinelong-term trendssaproxylic beetlesbutterfliesspecies richnessland use changeagricultural mechanizationglobal warmingdead woodforest management
标签—
Most studies on insect trends have focused on the past few decades, but major changes could have occurred earlier. If so, shifted baselines can result in misleading conclusions or poor conservation decisions. Here we analyse nine decades of insect trends in Switzerland and relate them to changes in land use and climate. By reconstructing continuous trends in species richness based on 1.2 million records of 595 saproxylic beetle and 216 butterfly species, we find that both groups declined from the 1930s to the 1960s. While saproxylic beetle richness stabilized and subsequently recovered, butterfly richness continued to decline until the 1980s and has not recovered. The strong mid-century decreases were linked to increases in agricultural mechanization, while the subsequent increases were linked to climate warming. Over the entire 90-year period, declines primarily affected specialist and cold-adapted species, while warm-adapted species have increased since the 1980s. Recent gains in saproxylic beetle richness might also reflect increased deadwood availability from windthrow and ‘biodiversity-friendly’ forest management. Our findings suggest that reducing adverse land use is key to maintaining and promoting insect diversity, and that shifted baselines and climate-change effects should be considered when setting restoration goals and priorities.

@article{neff2026,
author = {Felix Neff and Kurt Bollmann and Yannick Chittaro and Martin M. Gossner and Felix Herzog and Fränzi Korner-Nievergelt and Glenn Litsios and Carlos Martínez-Núñez and Marco Moretti and Emmanuel Rey and Andreas Sanchez and Eva Knop},
title = {Ninety-year trends reveal sharpest insect declines in the mid-twentieth century},
journal = {Nature Ecology \& Evolution},
year = {2026},
volume = {10},
number = {6},
pages = {1103-1113},
doi = {10.1038/s41559-026-03074-6},
publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC},
}· END ·