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Reply to: Weather anomalies cannot explain insect decline

Nature volume 639, pages E12–E13 (2025)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 12 March 2025

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replying to: C. A. Hallmann et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08528-0 (2025).

We very much appreciate that our article1 has stimulated discussions on potential reasons for temporal variations in insect biomass. In the accompanying Comment2, Hallmann et al. further contribute to this scientific discourse by posing questions regarding the analyses and the validation data presented in our work. It is generally considered best scientific practice to first replicate a previous approach as a reference and then add extensions and corrections with new data and ideas to facilitate the comparison, as we did in response to the original work by Hallmann and colleagues3. Unfortunately, the authors did not seize the opportunity to utilize our published model, a key component of our study, for testing the contribution of weather to the variation in their newly presented data4,5.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Conservation Biology and Forest Ecology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Rauhenebrach, Germany

    Jörg Müller, Oliver Mitesser, Julia Rothacher, Julia Freund, Clara Wild & Marina Wolz

  2. Bavarian Forest National Park, Grafenau, Germany

    Jörg Müller

  3. Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Torsten Hothorn

  4. Technical University of Munich, Ecoclimatology, TUM School of Life Sciences, Freising, Germany

    Ye Yuan & Annette Menzel

  5. TUD Dresden University of Technology, Forest Zoology, Tharandt, Germany

    Sebastian Seibold

  6. Institute for Advanced Study, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany

    Annette Menzel

Authors
  1. Jörg Müller
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  2. Torsten Hothorn
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  3. Ye Yuan
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  4. Sebastian Seibold
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  5. Oliver Mitesser
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  6. Julia Rothacher
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  7. Julia Freund
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  8. Clara Wild
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  9. Marina Wolz
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  10. Annette Menzel
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Contributions

J.M., A.M., O.M., S.S. and T.H. wrote the first draft of the manuscript and finalized the manuscript. Y.Y., J.R., J.F., M.W. and C.W. commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jörg Müller.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Müller, J., Hothorn, T., Yuan, Y. et al. Reply to: Weather anomalies cannot explain insect decline. Nature 639, E12–E13 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08529-z

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