- Listen to the full interview on the\u00a0Instant Genius<\/em> podcast<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>
Why are insects important, and what roles do they play in the ecosystem?<\/h4>\n
So many, it\u2019s hard to know where to start. Insects make up the bulk of life on Earth in terms of biodiversity. More than two-thirds of all species that we\u2019ve identified are insects. Birds, other insects, bats, lots of small mammals, lizards and freshwater fish all depend on insects for food. If the insects weren\u2019t there, then they wouldn\u2019t be there.<\/p>\n
But insects do a whole bunch of other important stuff too. Scientists call it \u2018ecosystem services\u2019, which is a bit of an unhelpful phrase. It\u2019s things like recycling, so maggots help to get rid of dead bodies, dung beetles help to get rid of cowpats, and other insects help to break down dead trees and leaves and other things. So they\u2019re really important in nutrient cycles. They keep the soil healthy. They move seeds around. They do all sorts of stuff.<\/p>\n
I guess the thing that most people recognise is that insects pollinate. So roughly 87 per cent of all the plant species on the planet need pollinating by some kind of animal \u2013 occasionally, in the tropics, that animal is a hummingbird or a bat. But 99 per cent of the time it\u2019s some kind of insect.<\/p>\n
Essentially, life on Earth would grind to a halt if we didn\u2019t have insects.<\/p>\n
There are large numbers of insects dying out. Why is that?<\/h4>\n
There are many drivers. You know, there\u2019s no single cause of insect declines, but probably the biggest one has been loss of habitats in the UK, things like our ancient woodlands, our heathlands, our fens and marshes, and our flower-rich meadows \u2013 most of them have been swept away. Obviously this isn\u2019t something that\u2019s confined to the UK. In the tropics, we\u2019ve got deforestation and so on.<\/p>\n
Essentially, we\u2019re replacing natural, biodiverse habitats with cities or monocultures of crops and that\u2019s had a huge impact. And associated with that is probably the second biggest driver of insect declines, which is the rise in the many different pesticides we use in farming, but also in gardens and in our streets.<\/p>\n
But then there\u2019s a whole bunch of other things, such as invasive species, climate change, light pollution affecting nocturnal moths and so on. It\u2019s almost like a sort of perfect storm. You know, insects might cope with one or two things, but they can\u2019t cope with this whole blizzard of different adverse pressures on their populations.<\/p>\n
![\""A\"]( "\\"\"Prof\\"")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Prof Dave Goulson offers a bumblebee a chance to give him a close-up inspection \u00a9 Alamy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n I remember when I was child, if you went for a drive in the car there would be bug splats all over the windscreen. I don\u2019t see that any more.<\/h4>\n
I\u2019ve heard this from so many people, and it\u2019s the only aspect of insect declines that\u2019s really in the public consciousness. You know, people don\u2019t pay much attention to insects \u2013 most people aren\u2019t regularly looking out for them. But there was this phenomenon of having to stop to clean your windscreen, which I can remember from when I was younger.<\/p>\n
There was a time a few decades ago where the windscreen, the headlights, the grille and the whole front of the car was this mass of dried, splattered insect guts. And it just doesn\u2019t happen at all any more.<\/p>\n
Are we seeing these declines in insects all over the world?<\/h4>\n
The long-term insect studies are biased towards Europe and North America, where there are lots of scientists, like me, that are interested in insects. We have almost no data from Africa, South America and most of Southeast Asia, which is really worrying because that\u2019s where most biodiversity is.<\/p>\n
There were one or two studies from the tropics, which show pretty big insect declines, but for most tropical insects, we haven\u2019t really got any data. I\u2019d be pretty confident that they\u2019re declining there, too, because we\u2019re seeing massive habitat loss and climate change and all these other environmental issues affecting those countries.<\/p>\n
What will happen if we lose the insects? What will the future look like?<\/h4>\n
Life will be tough. Most of the fruits and vegetables we eat depend upon insects to give a good harvest. So if we lose pollinators, then it\u2019s going to be really difficult to provide a healthy diet to the growing human population.<\/p>\n
But it isn\u2019t just pollination. I mentioned earlier that insects help to keep the soil healthy; we have major problems with soil degradation around the world. Soil health depends on all the little creatures that live in it and we need healthy soils to grow crops. We also need insects to recycle things like cow dung. It\u2019s absolutely vital that all the nutrients in cow dung get recycled.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s actually a really interesting example of the importance of that. When we colonised Australia and we took cattle, there were no dung beetles in Australia that could cope with cow dung, as they were used to marsupial dung, which is really dry. The cowpats weren\u2019t being removed and were just drying into hard little plates. Eventually, the entire landscape was covered in a layer of cowpats and the grass couldn\u2019t go grow through.<\/p>\n
At one stage, 15,000km2<\/sup> of Australia was covered under dried cowpats. And so they introduced dung beetles able to cope with cow dung. That was one example of a very successful introduction. Some animal introductions have gone badly wrong, but the dung beetles that were introduced ate all the dung and now the grass is doing well, the nutrients are being recycled.<\/p>\n
It just shows that we take it for granted that the insects are there and they\u2019re doing these things. And if they\u2019re not there, then that\u2019s when we notice the problems.<\/p>\n
Read more about insect conservation:<\/strong><\/p>\n
- 9 ways you can help to save insects from extinction<\/a><\/li>\n
- Can we save the insects?<\/a><\/li>\n
- Over a quarter of land-dwelling insects lost in the last 30 years<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>
Do we know how many insects are still out there waiting to be discovered?<\/h4>\n
We\u2019ve named 1.1 million species of insect so far, roughly. We find new ones every day. There are undoubtedly lots we haven\u2019t yet described, or haven\u2019t given any kind of name to. But scientists struggle to estimate exactly how many there are.<\/p>\n
People have tried to estimate, and most of the predictions suggest that there are somewhere between a million and 10 million more insect species that we haven\u2019t yet named. Obviously, that\u2019s a huge range, so it\u2019s probably a more realistic to say there are four or five million more species.<\/p>\n
But that means that we\u2019ve only named about 20 per cent \u2013 it\u2019s absolutely astonishing that there are all these amazing creatures out there that we\u2019ve yet to discover.<\/p>\n
Is there anything we can do in our day-to-day lives to help the insects?<\/h4>\n
You see these environmental issues, like the rainforest burning and you feel helpless. It\u2019s depressing. You wonder, \u201cWhat on Earth can I do to help?\u201d But with insects it\u2019s different. They live in our gardens and local parks and in the road verges and, you know, they\u2019re everywhere. And even small things really do make a difference in the end. Most insects, thankfully, haven\u2019t yet gone extinct, and they can breed really fast, so if you provide the right conditions for them, their populations recover quickly, unlike pandas or tigers.<\/p>\n
The obvious place to start, if you\u2019re lucky enough to have a garden, is to grow lots of bee-friendly and pollinator-friendly flowers. Grow some wildflowers, don\u2019t mow your lawn too much, and plant some flowering trees if you\u2019ve got a big enough garden. A pond will support a whole range of insect life. A little bee hotel will work quite well for some solitary bees. Don\u2019t use any pesticides. It seems crazy to me that we spray poisons in our gardens and the councils spray them in our streets and so on.<\/p>\n
Most things you can do are really simple and many of them involve doing less rather than more, like less mowing of your lawn, less spraying of pesticides, not being so tidy, allowing a few weeds to flower. And little things like these really do make a difference.<\/p>\n
There are 22 million private gardens in the UK. So just imagine if most of them were insect- and wildlife-friendly. That would really make a difference. It would be kind of a national network of little patches of miniature nature reserves. That would be fantastic.<\/p>\n
![\""It\u2019s\"]( "\\"\"It\u2019s\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>It\u2019s a dirty job\u2026 but without dung beetles to do it, crucial nutrients wouldn\u2019t get recycled and the world\u2019s soils would be in bad shape \u00a9 Alamy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Many people dislike insects, and say, \u201cWhat\u2019s the point in a wasp? What\u2019s the point in a mosquito?\u201d Is there any way we can change people\u2019s minds on that?<\/h4>\n
Well, I often say, \u201cWhat\u2019s the point of people?\u201d<\/p>\n
There are different ways of trying to persuade people that insects deserve looking after. You can use the argument that they\u2019re important \u2013 they often do things that are valuable to us, even if we might not recognise them. Wasps, for example, are effective pollinators \u2013 many people don\u2019t realise that. They\u2019re also really good at pest control, they eat aphids and caterpillars on our crops.<\/p>\n
But there are probably some insects that don\u2019t do anything useful at all and you can\u2019t create an economic, utilitarian argument to save them. But I think it\u2019s really sad to bring everything back to a species only being worth saving if it does something for us. It\u2019s incredibly selfish. These are creatures that have been on the planet for millions of years \u2013 much, much longer than we have. And, you know, whether they do something useful or not, whether we find them beautiful or not, surely they have as much right to be here as we do?<\/p>\n
We should try to be more tolerant of nature and value it for its own sake. We live on this rock hurtling through space with a little crust of life clinging to its surface. I mean, the whole thing is absurd and unbelievable, really.<\/p>\n
As far as we know, there may be no other life in the Universe, or it may be so far away that we never encounter it \u2013 and certainly nothing like [the life here on] Earth. It\u2019s unique. It\u2019s our home. It gives us everything we could want. You know, it\u2019s beautiful. It\u2019s inspirational. It feeds us and all the rest of it. And we\u2019re not really looking after it terribly well.<\/p>\n
And I find that just completely extraordinary. How stupid are we that we don\u2019t look after our home and all of the creatures that live on it? All our fellow travellers on this rock hurtling through space, we should value them.<\/p>\n
These little creatures deserve to live. I just think they\u2019re amazing, actually. The more time you spend looking at insects, the more you realise how fascinating and intriguing they are and how much there is we don\u2019t know about them, and we\u2019ll never know if we wipe them all out. There are all these millions of insects we haven\u2019t even discovered yet; who knows what secrets they have?<\/p>\n
I find it terribly sad, the thought that there are species going extinct that we haven\u2019t even seen. Species that we\u2019ll never know existed \u2013 because they\u2019ll be gone. And that seems like a terrible thing.<\/p>\n
- This article first appeared in\u00a0issue 369<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0BBC Science Focus Magazine<\/em>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0find out how to subscribe here<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
Read more about insects:<\/strong><\/p>\n
- A partying caterpillar and a bridge made of ants: The winners of the National Insect Week Photo Competition<\/a><\/li>\n
- Five fascinating facts about bees<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/body><\/html>\n
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- Five fascinating facts about bees<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/body><\/html>\n
- A partying caterpillar and a bridge made of ants: The winners of the National Insect Week Photo Competition<\/a><\/li>\n
- Can we save the insects?<\/a><\/li>\n
- 9 ways you can help to save insects from extinction<\/a><\/li>\n
![\""A\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/4\/2021\/11\/Alamy_2A4JHPP-crop-b0b23b1.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"Prof\\"")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>![\""It\u2019s\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/4\/2021\/11\/Alamy_2CXJ9XF-crop-dcc687a.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"It\u2019s\\"\/")
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