This story appears in the May 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine.
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Where have all the insects gone?
Bugs aren’t just occasional nuisances, they’re crucial to the environment. Now populations of species worldwide are falling at alarming rates.
The extinction of the one-inch-wide Xerces blue butterfly, last seen in the dunes around San Francisco nearly 80 years ago, may have been a harbinger of what some scientists fear could become a global insect die-off.
Preserved specimen photographed at California Academy of Sciences
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