Live and let fly

They’re buzzing, biting, stinging and seemingly everywhere around the house and garden, so it’s easy to see why we become irritated with insects in the late summer months, when there’s so much ripe fruit for them to gorge on. however, next time you reach for a fly swatter to silence that pesky bluebottle or bemoan the number of wasps tucking into the fallen apples on the lawn, remember that we need insects for our very existence.

They come in all shapes, colours and sizes—many unexpectedly beautiful, others ugly and some just beyond imagination. The international insect world is colossal—they outnumber us by 200 million to one—and scientists believe we’ve named a mere 950,000 of the suspected one million-plus species.

The secret of their success is the ability to breed quickly in varying and prolific ways—a newly born aphid becomes a reproducing adult within a week and can produce up to five offspring a day for 30 days. No wonder that, in Britain, we think of most of our 22,500 species as pests, especially when we’re being eaten by a cloud of midges or our brassicas have been annihilated by cabbage whites.

however, without them, we wouldn’t be here. Insects have provided us with honey and silk for thousands of years, but their major contributions are subtler. en masse, they’re the world’s biggest recyclers, breaking down detritus into useful organic matter. Some predate other troublesome species— ladybirds can eat 50-plus aphids a day.

Their most important job is as pollinators. Many crops would fail if the army of bees and other insects didn’t busy themselves visiting spring blooms. They also play a vital role as a source of protein in the food chain, particularly at the bottom, where they give creatures a start in life.

In modern times, we’ve been over-zealous with our ever-increasing arsenal of insecticides and herbicides that denude niche insects of their host plants. It isn’t just sprays that have caused insect numbers to plummet, but also the removal of hedgerows, block cropping and the loss of simple crop rotations. Increased nitrogen use and de-stoning don’t help either.

We simply can’t survive without insects —there’s also an argument that we should be eating them (page 48)—and we must acknowledge their welfare in any postbrexit agricultural decisions in a bid to halt the decline of their precious numbers and ensure their future.

‘We simply can’t survive without insects