Earth is turning into a planet of flies

When you think of flowers being pollinated, you likely picture a bee or butterfly doing the work. But many different insects also visit flowers and help plants reproduce, including flies, wasps, beetles, and even certain mosquitoes. Some birds and bats also benefit flowering vegetation, acting as the liaison for sexual reproduction, a strange but widespread evolutionary practice.

But sadly, climate change is rapidly shifting the relationships between plants and certain bugs. And in Scandinavia, that has meant that flies are taking the place of moths and other more charismatic insects. The takeover of the flies speaks to the biodiverse history of the region that is being lost as the climate warms.

Researchers were able to figure this out using an interesting comparative analysis of pollinators that involved looking back at old research. Writing in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, researchers recreated an experiment from over a century ago involving an inventory of the types of insects visiting plants.

Earth is turning into a planet of flies