JW

Jessica Ware

Things Jessica Says on Podcasts

An entomologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History, on StarTalk Radio about why insect populations are collapsing due to habitat loss, warming and light pollution.

Where to Find Them

Jessica Ware writes StarTalk Radio . They have also been a guest on Bug Banter with the Xerces Society and NaturallyScott .

Recently: “It’s Bugs’ World and We’re Just Living In It with Jessica Ware” on StarTalk Radio (August 2026); “It’s Bugs’ World and We’re Just Living In It with Jessica Ware” on StarTalk Radio (August 2026); “E62 Jessica Ware – Dragonflies, Ancient Flight & the Secret World of Insects! 🪰🌎” on NaturallyScott (May 2026); “Dragonflies and Damselflies: A Life's Journey from Water to the Sky” on Bug Banter with the Xerces Society (November 2024); “Cosmic Queries – Cicada Invasion! With Jessica Ware” on StarTalk Radio (April 2021).

What They Said

“The catastrophe that we're seeing, we created and we're kind of keeping it going.” — Jessica Ware, StarTalk Radio

Jessica Ware, on why insect populations are collapsing so fast: habitat destroyed for cities, warming temperatures, light pollution disrupting insect navigation and mating. She's blunt that the decline isn't a natural cycle but an ongoing, human-driven process.

StarTalk Radio · 2026-08-18 Permalink → Listen →
StarTalk Radio Around 32:43 into the episode
Jessica Ware

Oh, so yeah, so ticks are not bugs. They're arachnids. It's not that we're bad at killing ticks. It's that because of climate change, because of changing temperatures, ticks from other regions are moving and they're expanding their ranges. That's why we have the lone star tick here, for example, which is the one that causes a meat allergy. It can carry a pathogen that can cause a meat allergy. It's not, that's because of us. We changed the climate and now they've been able to move in. So we've created habitats

Neil deGrasse Tyson

that previously were hostile to some varieties of insects. Now they can hang out and do the backstroke. And now we're affected by that because that was a place we created. Yeah,

Jessica Ware

we created them. The catastrophe that we're seeing, we created and we're kind of keeping it going. We could make decisions that would actually have really beneficial impacts on insects that we should make.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Why don't we make that? I can't just go past this because I know people who've been bitten by the lone star tick. They can't. So it's not that they can't eat meat, apparently. They can't eat mammals. So they can eat chicken and fish. So I heard. You know what I think? I think vegetarians created this in the lab. Yeah.

Negin Farsad

They were like, what

Jessica Ware

could we do? Aflogal. That's a good

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode
“…insects we think are declining at a rate that we've never seen before.” — Jessica Ware, StarTalk Radio

Entomologist Jessica Ware, curator at the American Museum of Natural History, on the pace of global insect population decline compared to historical baselines. She traces it to habitat loss, pollution, and light pollution driven by human urbanization.

StarTalk Radio · 2026-08-18 Permalink → Listen →
StarTalk Radio Around 26:58 into the episode
Jessica Ware

Yeah. It's

Neil deGrasse Tyson

my first inquiry with you. Does that relate at all to whatever impact climate change has on the world population of insects on bugs? And do they migrate? Do they hang out? Do they spring forth? Are these connected? So

Jessica Ware

insects we think are declining at a rate that we've never seen before. People after the Industrial Revolution, there's stuff in the literature that said, hey, like, I'm not sure, but I think this might have a negative impact on insects. And fast forward to the early 2010s, people started doing studies that showed that populations of a particular butterfly had dropped by 70%. Populations of this other species dropped by big numbers. And bug zappers

Neil deGrasse Tyson

and raid spray are dying. They're doing their

Negin Farsad

job. Oh my

Jessica Ware

gosh. Are they really?

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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