Besides house flies and common roaches… I just feel like I was seeing a lot more diversity this time last year in Sydney. I know there is a downwards trend in general but this is a big change in just one year.
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In the US but I have not noticed a decrease, if anything an increse
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Apparently, this is a worldwide trend.
are there less bugs now - Search
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Also weather conditions have an impact. Has it been wet in Sydney this year? Strangely insects like dry weather and you will often see more insects in droughts than good seasons.
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I’m somewhat sceptical that any one person can detect meaningful change in something so vast and biodiverse as insect life, across such a short period as one year, given natural population cycles, changes in weather, etc etc. So when I hear personal anecdotes, I tend to feel a bit cynical. For me, after 7 years of biological recording, I think I might have noticed minor fluctuation in a location or taxon in UK here or there…but its impossible to gauge beyond the taxa I have looked at and the location I am in… which makes it a bit meaningless.
If you are looking for concrete evidence around broader insect decline though, the windshield studies sound pretty irrefutable :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon
I’m sure there are others.
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Given that humans are spraying vast areas with potent insecticides every year plus habitat destruction, it would be strange if there was no insect decline.
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2024 was terrible for inverts in the UK but this year was quite a bumper year. The overall trend is still downwards though.
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I actually have the opposite feeling here but that’s because our winters have been milder (EU). Also a decline of one species can be quickly compensated by another one adapting better, etc.
It’s hard to reply in a generic level (all territories, weathers, observation bias, etc.).
Edit: I live near woody valleys in Lux, so doesn’t apply to all EU, obviously.
Huh, other people are noticing it too? This year we had such a huge decrease in arthropod diversity compared to last year, although we did get a pretty harsh Winter January…
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Herbicides are consistently sprayed as well. Killing the “weeds” kills the insects too… mowing roadsides kills them, too.
I moved from city to farm/forest a decade ago, and the windshield proves it for me, when I can ride for four hours and not need a wash… sad.
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I’m surprised when someone on iNat asks for anecdotal answers to a question like this, when iNaturalist is a vast repository of data. So, I went to the Explore page, set some date parameters searching for Insecta, and got an answer: 14.4 million observations in 2024, 16.6 million to date in 2025. Anyone can refine that search for more particular taxa.
OK, we know that iNaturalist is growing, so there are more observers posting more observations of everything without any consistent protocol, so this data would never survive peer review. But it’s certainly a stronger signal than any one of us could provide from our personal recollections.
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I forgot to mentioned there was a study somewhere that said when you get an extremely hot Summer, it severely effects the next year’s generation of arthropods (makes sense, since 2024 was a bit hotter than normal where I live).
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i dont think it is stronger. As you have already noted - the platform growth has to be accounted for primarily at minimum.
Then for stronger reasoning, there are factors of geographic coverage (either year could have observations that are not comparable - that is say if 2024 has say 10k observations from observers in some remote region from various reasons like coordinated nature programs, observers trips, observers popping in that area from CNC which is factually major bump in inat data — while 2025 did not), observer effort (are some observers duplicating more and how much did they duplicate observations in 2024 vs 2025), uniqueness (did 2025 have more uploads of temporal than 2024 for single species in reality - aka if users uploaded lifestages or observations of same organism everyday or if set of users saw same organism across days in one year over another; so in reality such observations will not be truly answering question of - are X taxa decreasing), diversity (it could just as well be case that only some set of Species observations may have increased from multiple factors like - accessibility and invasiveness of that species, how cool it looked to catch eye of photographer and get uploaded by multiple observers, regional factor and observers bias within that region, …), user activity (observers passive in one year, active in another)
—
so a strong signal question would be “Given stable sampled cohort of quality iNaturalist observers, who has similar or comparable spatial activity in both year 2024 and 2025, and then callibrated with their per-unit-encounter-activity-and-spatialheterogenity-and-effort, did a statistical model (say heirarchial bayesian model or negative binomial mixed model) signal indicate decrease of taxa or increase”
There is also another factor of climate change and any programs ideology shifts in 2024 and 2025 which maynot be apparent in direct end data.
For example, say CNC 2026 wants to shift to quality over quantity which will see major numbers trend change in next year iff goals works reasonably, National moth week india wants to shift dates for India specifically that fits with regional moth richness months - if so the increase in species observations will be majorly from such change rather than increase in taxa, climate change shifts species months and regions and altitude of species from lack of habitat or temperature shifts - and this signal isnt decoupled easily too from just count of observations signal.
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We had a 6 month drought in South Australia starting about a year ago (there is a drought somewhere at any given time) and insect numbers dropped. They are recovering now after a wetter season or two.
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media has been talking about the ‘insect apocalypse’ for at least a decade by now - and in the meantime we humans have increased habitat destruction, pesticide usage, and building more and more data centers that are more and more resource-draining.
that is to say, yes, lots of people have been noticing a global decline year after year.
it won’t change unless we do.
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I noticed just the opposite… I found countless more butterflies and moths (silver Ys especially) that the last two years or so…
Arachnids… I found plenty this year, but I can’t judge how many they are compared to previous years because I only started loonking for more this year…
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compared with this time last year, I’ve seen far fewer bees both native and invasive and I’m definitely getting fewer Xmas beetles at my usual spot but the emergence of Yoyetta and Red Eye cicadas here in Canberra has been overwhelming and so loud.
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Absolutely. I attribute it to a horribly dry year. (SoCal)