NY Times said:Bat experts fear that what they call White Nose Syndrome may spell doom for several species that keep insect pests under control.
Good job they all being kept frozen in Norway. Oops.
http://dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=7444&page=2
the jar is shut? there must've been eggs in there and hatched?
if insects were to vanish, the terrestrial environment would soon collapse into chaos. ... Flowering plants would go first, then herbaceous plants, then insect-pollinated shrubs and trees, then birds and animals and, finally, the soil. ... The human diet would be wind-pollinated grasses and whatever remained to be harvested from a fished-out sea. It would not be enough. Widespread starvation would shrink the population to a fraction of its former size. The wars for control of the dwindling resources, the suffering, and the tumultuous decline to dark-age barbarism would be unprecedented in human history. ... It would be a serious mistake to let even one species of the millions on Earth go extinct.” - E O Wilson
Already, says Goulson, crop yields are beginning to suffer. Bald spots are appearing at the centres of bean fields where bumblebees are failing to penetrate. As in so many other aspects of global life, it is China that lights the way ahead. In Sichuan province, the most important crop is pears, which depend on pollination by bees. But there are no bees. A blunderbuss approach to pesticides has all but wiped them out. Result: thousands of villagers have to turn out with paintbrushes to pollinate the trees by hand. “It’s just about possible in a country where labour is cheap,” says Goulson, “but it wouldn’t work in Europe.”