Losing pollinators could mean losing an important part of our culture

Pollinator species provide billions of dollars worth of food and bio fuel, but they’re also an important part of our shared human history.

Photo by amy lynn grover on Unsplash

As a kid, I used to raise Monarch butterflies with my dad. It was an important memory, and led me to want to become a pollinator ecologist. Many people share a memory of some type of insect, and many pollinators have become cultural symbols around the world. Losing these species wouldn’t just hurt our bottom line — they could also cause a decline in human well-being.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge created a ‘risk index’ to identify the human impacts of enormous pollinator declines across six global regions for a recent study from Nature Ecology & Evolution. While many studies seek to understand how pollinator losses will affect plant species that rely on insect pollination, the scientists wanted to understand how losing pollinators such as bees, butterflies, wasps, and flies could affect humanity.

Unsurprisingly, the team of 20 scientists and indigenous representatives found that the biggest risk for humans would be a fall in quantity (and quality) of food crops. Pollinators are responsible for pollinating an estimated 75% of flowering plants and a third of food crops worldwide. Pollinated crops grown by humans for food and…