• Global Decline of Insect Pollinators Threatens the Human Food Supply

    By The Editors An international team of 40 scientists (from 27 institutions involved in the UK’s Insect Pollinators Initiative) reports that pollinating insects, essential to the food supply, are threatened at a global level by a “cocktail” of multiple pressures that puts their survival at risk.  The findings were published April 22 in the journal “Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment” (Adam J Vanbergen, and the Insect Pollinators Initiative. 2013. Threats to an ecosystem service: pressures on pollinators). The multiple pressures within the “cocktail” combine and exacerbate the negative impacts on insect pollinators of crops and wild plants. What are these multiple pressures?  Intensification of land-use, climate change, the spread of species that…