Search query: The future of global food security
Video title:  believe the insect population is declining when aphids isopods beetles eat up the ceilings in your garden or ants invade your summer picnic still it's also difficult to wrap our heads around how many insects there are regarding diversity insects represent two-thirds of the world's 1.5 million documented species with Millions more bugs still undiscovered and to put this in perspective the whole of the animal kingdom comprises only approximately 73 000 vertebrates animals that's animals with a backbone from humans to birds and fish now these backbone willing animals represent a mere fraction less than five percent of the overall known species within the animal kingdom and to visualize this in yet another way there's roughly the same number of ladybug species alone as there are all species of the mammals on the planet now typically we only hear about this concern when it comes to pollinating insects like bees or butterflies and flies their contribution to our food supply cannot be understated insects pollinate more than 75 percent of global crops they also break down waste materials and manure churn up soil and control excessive plant growth their Nature's gardeners study after study is revealing that this decline is across a board and at an accelerating and alarming rate it's estimated that the world has already lost almost 10 percent of all insect species over the last century and a half and their decline is accelerating not slowing down that's a conservative estimate too according to one study flying insect numbers have plunged by 60 percent since 2004 alone some studies show an alarmingly high rate of population decline now the scary part of this is that we don't know what we don't know the insect population is so vast that the populations of only about one percent of it have ever been assessed of the small fraction that has been assessed 20 percent or one in five of them are considered threatened in an even higher percentage was in Decline spillover already suffering from a significant