Title: Around 9,000 species have already gone extinct in Australia due in large part to the widespread overuse of pesticides – new study

[The Conversation, by John Woinarski & Jess Marsh] -- More than 95% of Australian animals are invertebrates (animals without backbones – spiders, snails, insects, crabs, worms and others). There are at least 300,000 species of invertebrate in Australia. Our best estimate is that 9,111 invertebrate species have become extinct in Australia since 1788. This dwarfs the current official estimate of the total number of extinctions across all plant and animal species in Australia.

The extinction of so many invertebrate species is not an arcane concern for those few people who care about bugs. Invertebrates are the building blocks of almost all ecological systems. Loss of invertebrates will destabilise those systems. It will negatively impact the resources we depend upon, like pollination, cycling of nutrients into the soil, clean air and waterways.

This vast number of extinctions is not simply a historical blemish. Importantly, we estimate that the current rate of extinctions of Australian invertebrates is between one and three species every week.

Many of the factors that have caused extinctions in Australian plants and vertebrates also threaten invertebrates. These include extensive habitat destruction ... degradation and transformation of aquatic environments, and changed fire regimes. For invertebrates, added to that cocktail of threats is the widespread use of insecticides, pesticides and herbicides.

Our results are a wake-up call.

To provide better protection across all of Australia’s biodiversity, we need to better protect centres of endemism and better control key threats (such as habitat destruction and broad-scale use of insecticides).

Preventing extinctions of invertebrate species is a formidable challenge. A first step is for everyone to be aware of the huge distortion in conservation efforts and awareness, and the likely magnitude of invertebrate extinctions.

We can help lower the rate of invertebrate extinctions, but it will take a shift in thinking.

(Image redit: David A. Young)

Full article available here




Attachments:
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Article: WeedsNews6603 (permalink)
Categories: :WeedsNews:insecticides, :WeedsNews:invertebrates, :WeedsNews:extinction, :WeedsNews:research alert, :WeedsNews:habitat loss
Date: 3 January 2025; 4:21:55 PM AEDT

Author Name: David Low
Author ID: adminDavid