![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Like wolves and bats, insects suffer from a largely ill-deserved bad reputation. In a narrative of majestic landscapes, charismatic megafauna, and irreplaceable historical treasures, it can feel counterintuitive to devote bandwidth to bugs people can find in their own backyards. So given their importance to humanity-and their need for conservation-why don’t we hear more about invertebrates in the National Park System? In some sense, their ubiquity hides them in plain sight. Amid human-driven climate change, pesticide use, light pollution, and habitat loss, it is estimated that 40% of the world’s insect species may go extinct in a few short decades, leading many observers to predict an “insect apocalypse.” 4 NPS/Tony Palmerīut like so many other species, insects are in decline. Our learned negative response to "creepy-crawlies" posesĬhallenges for insect conservation efforts. It'd be a place where there would be rotting feces and corpses everywhere because dung beetles and other insects that break down those materials would be gone,” as environmental writer Oliver Milman has put it. Without them, “You would certainly have mass starvation societal unrest. More importantly, invertebrates make our world livable. If we paid insects market value for their ecological services, the bill would be at least $3.5 trillion per year. ![]() They are the foundation of the animal food chain and play a key role in decomposition and nutrient cycling. 1 Insects pollinate the plants that feed us. It’s estimated that at any given time, about 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects are flying, crawling, and burrowing around the planet. Invertebrates comprise more than 90% of Earth's animal species, and all but 10% of known invertebrates are insects (arthropods with three body segments, three pairs of jointed legs, and paired wings). “Worms that secrete bioluminescent fluids.” In my career as a National Park Service science writer, that’s not a phrase I ever expected to be researching-or writing an article about.īut why not? My recent conversation with biologist Tony Palmer illuminated the gap between the fundamental role of invertebrates in our ecosystems and their frequent lack of inclusion in wildlife conservation efforts-and NPS interpretation. Photo by Julius Schlosburg (used with permission) Southwest synchronous fireflies at Tumacácori NHP. by Alice Wondrak Biel, Sonoran Desert Network ![]()
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