It’s been a cold spring. Last spring it was so hot that our Rhododendrons never bloomed (a friend told me the unopened blooms essentially fried in the sun). This spring there’s not quite enough sun; the leaves on the oak trees are still in winter mode, taking their time coming out of their protective buds. The insects must be confused, it was so warm a couple weeks ago. I have seen more spiders this spring than last, more diverse species than I have ever encountered before like the exotic sowbug killer I mentioned in a previous post. That wolf spider I mentioned in my last post is still alive and living in my kitchen cabinet, I just noticed him today. And I have a new friend in one of the bathrooms – a black spider that resembles a crab. He – or perhaps someone that looks like him – has been hanging out there for a while. I have tried in vain to identify this tiny black crab-like spider online, all I have accomplished is making my skin crawl and wasting a lot of time on YouTube watching spider videos. After seeing all these I may change my mind about wanting to go to the Amazon someday…but I hope not! We may have to deal with cold winters in New England, but in return we get smaller, less lethal bugs.
Insects cannot regulate their body temperature, so they are particularly sensitive to climate change. Most of us don’t think about the lowly “bug” when we think about our impact on the earth. They aren’t cute and cuddly, so they don’t end up on too many “save the planet” ad campaigns. We don’t think about the fact that there are billions of them, decomposing and recycling soil and other matter, providing food for birds and animals, and pollinating trees, flowers and crops. In my lifetime I am aware of the fact that I have encountered less bumblebees and honeybees, and I grew up in a much more urban environment than where I live now. I have seen out of control caterpillar populations wreak havoc on trees many times. We took it as a “normal” occurence and just a nuisance year after year.
Scientists can only wait and see, there is no research that can predict even the immediate future for insects. Like us, they can only observe and guess. An article in Scientific American from last year gives some historical clues from a climate change event that happened many thousands of years ago: “Warming winters will throw into confusion old orders of species, nurturing unexpected predators and weakening age-old relationships that helped form forests…The same simultaneous decline in Cape Cod oaks and hemlocks in northeastern North America occurred 5,500 years ago, two die-offs that were long thought to be separate events. But sedimentary records showing a sudden severe drought at the same time implicates climate in both events. Bugs may have delivered the blow, but the bugs were fostered by climate change.”
Leave a Reply