Global bird populations under increasing threat

NEWS / 10 JULY 2018, 09:00AM / STAFF WRITER

The research, published in Springer’s journal The Science of Nature, highlights the important role birds play in keeping plant-eating insect populations under control. Picture: Maurice Baker

Birds around the world eat 400 to 500 million metric tons of beetles, flies, ants, moths, aphids, grasshoppers, crickets and other arthropods a year, according to an international study by Martin Nyffeler of the University of Basel in Switzer- land.

The research, published in Springer’s journal The Science of Nature, highlights the important role birds play in keeping plant-eating insect populations under control.

Nyffeler and his colleagues based their figures on 103 studies that highlighted the volume of prey that insect-eating birds consume in seven of the world’s major ecological communities, known as biomes.

According to their estimations, this amounts to between 400 and 500 million tons of insects a year, but is most likely to be on the lower end of the range.

Their calculations are supported by a large number of experimental studies conducted by many different research teams in a variety of habitats in different parts of the world.

“The global population of insectivorous birds annually consumes as much energy as a megacity the size of New York.

Continued