The beauty of insects and howto lure them to your space.
I remember when people casually referred to all striped invertebrates as “bees,” when all insects were “bugs” and any such thing that buzzed in their vicinity required hosing with lethal poison.
Some people still see the insect world that way, no doubt, but I suspect the mass consciousness has shifted to a kinder feeling toward these creatures — and with it an understanding that most insects enrich the gardening experience.
And there are a lot of species. You will find fewer than 100 types of frog in North America, fewer than 1,000 bird species but more than 90,000 specific insects.
I knowwe havemoved beyond the “bug” and “bee” stage because when I talk to people who are not passionate about gardening (poor things), they speak of a desire to put in a wildflower garden for the pollinators. By wildflowers, theymean native ornamentals, and by pollinators those two poster kids of beleaguered insects, the monarch butterfly and the honeybee. Whether native plants alone are the cure-all, or whethermonarchs and honeybees are the worst off, are allmatters open to debate. But the underlying point is that even people who are not into gardening are thinking beyond fence-to-fence lawn and chemicals and about insects and long-flowering perennials. And it’s the insects that are drawing them into gardening, not the other way around.
There are insects none of us want, starting with the ones that want to snack on us — mosquitoes and biting flies, for example — and those that want to snack on our beloved plants. Legions of professional entomologists fret about sawflies, ambrosia beetles, scale insects and leafhoppers. But the home gardener can be more relaxed. When I realizedmy carrot crop was being attacked by grubs, I starting harvesting them in bulk and found different ways to consume them. The carrot soup was particularly good.
Even when the pests are unwelcome, you can still find them interesting and pretty. I amthinking of the harlequin bug (a real pest of kale), the hornworm growing fat on your tomatoes and even that bejeweled scarab, the Japanese beetle.
Other insects actually help the gardener, not just with pollination and fruit set but in killing off parasites. I have come to distinguish between the tiniest bees and wasps and consider it a thrill when a tiny, iridescent sweat bee lands on the back ofmy hand for a quick slurp.
As a class of organisms, insects are obviously successful — they were flying, crawling and swimming around this planet long before we showed up. So apart from the honeybee, the monarch and a few bumblebee species, it seems unlikely that insects would be in asmuch trouble as other life-forms or their habitats in the scary so-called Anthropocene, if only for their sheer numbers and species diversity.
But for years, reports have argued thatmany species are disappearing, and more recently there has beenmuch talk of a dire collapse of the insect world, fueled by some high-profile published studies.
This year, a reviewof 73 scientific papers spoke of a decline so rapid that if it went unabated, insects would suffer amass extinction.
This spurred other scientists to pick large holes in the predictions, saying the findings and their interpretations were flawed.
What is needed, they say, is a better understanding of baseline populations that will give future declinesmore context. About 1 million insect species are scientifically recognized, but that is a fraction of the true number. Estimates range widely. A conservative figure is 5.5 million.
Matthew Forister, an ecologist at the University of Nevada, is among those who believe we can’t wait for complete insect tallies to protect them. He is the co-author of a new scientific review that argues that declines in insect diversity and abundance have been well demonstrated; in North America, 28 percent of bumblebee species are considered threatened and 19 percent of butterfly species are at risk of extinction. Moreover, he told me, we know that climate change, habitat loss and pollution are harming animals and plants, and it is logical to assume that the mostly uncharted world of insects is imperiled too, especially when you consider that pesticide use on the planet has never been higher. The paper was written with Emma Pelton and Scott Hoffman Black, both of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
The authors are pushing for broadmeasures to conserve and protect insect habitats, including changing agricultural policies that reward ecologically harmful farming methods. Pesticides used for the cosmetic appearance of landscapes, parks and other green spaces should be banned. Managers of public green spaces, including highway edges, should establish insect diversity as a goal.
The beauty of insects, Forister said, is that it is in the power of virtually everyone to help them and the results are almost immediate. Plant a zinnia in a balcony container, and a butterfly will show up. Convert parts of your lawn into perennial beds, and pollinators will appear, your garden will be more interesting and beautiful, and your enthusiasmwill spread to the neighborhood, Black said.
“We aren’t saying we don’t needmore science,” he said. “We are saying we have enough to make decisions and take action.”