"Not long ago, a lengthy drive on a hot day wouldn't be complete without scraping bug guts off a windshield. But splattered insects have gone the way of the Chevy Nova — you just don't see them on the road like you used to.

Biologists call this the windshield phenomenon. It's a symptom, they say, of a vanishing population.

'For those of us who look, I think all of us are disturbed and all of us are seeing fewer insects,' said Scott Black, executive director of the Portland, Ore.-based Xerces Society, a nonprofit environmental group that promotes insect conservation. 'On warm summer nights you used to see them around streetlights.'"

Ben Guarino reports for the Washington Post October 18, 2017. [2]