Published: September 26, 2008 02:11 pm      

Consider bugs before they leave for the year

Quick, before summer’s all gone, I have to talk to you about insects.

Five years ago the Nature Conservancy published a fascinating article by William Stolzonburg called “Small Matters” and I thought it was time to share it with you. It was about “these little things that run the world,” and refers, not to those mysterious things we’ve sort of gotten used to like atoms and quarks and such, but — well, plain and simple — bugs.

Gotta admit, there have been times when I suspected that bugs were tops on the totem pole myself. Every year in my house, the battle of the moths runs on some basic cycle unknown to me but based on the general rule that just when you think you’ve got rid of them all — they’re back again in full combat force the next day. This year the fruit flies have taken over, but I know the moths will be back, perhaps generously dividing up the territory, for we know moths love to share — especially our food and our clothes.

Stolzonburg says that, of the 476 animal species that have become extinct in the past two hundred years, 409 are invertebrates. (Read, animals without backbones, or mainly insects.) This may not strike us as anything serious — darn it, another kind of mosquito gone missing! — but apparently it is.

We are accustomed to hearing about the passenger pigeons, who used to fill the skies from horizon to horizon with their numbers, until they all died out by the early 20th century. Well, it seems that a swarm of 10 billion locusts passed over Nebraska in 1875. It was “1,800 miles long, 110 miles wide, 5 days in passing, a ... 6,000-ton mass of insects. Just 25 years later (that breed of locust) was extinct.”

To some it was a plague, but, like the buffalo, it nurtured the entire ecosystem of grasslands. It encouraged the growth of prairie vegetation in the same way that wildfires renew great forest systems. There is so much we are just learning in our time, and one thing is that even the seemingly unimportant parts of nature have their purposes.

Almost makes you hesitate to swat that fly.

Oh, go ahead.

Although I do apologize first to any bug I kill. No doubt you’ve already heard about the bees. Lots of people might say “So what?” about locusts, but think twice about the gradual disappearance of the bees. Experts estimate that a huge amount of the quarter million species of flowering plants in this world depend for reproduction on animal pollinators. More than one bite out of every three we take of everything from McDonald french fries to, indirectly, that prime 16-oz steak you order on your birthday (shame on you; I only eat the 6-oz one) depends on animal pollinators. And they’re running out of steam.

Here’s another fact that might make you take notice: Without all these millions of invertebrates (many of them yet undiscovered) “the earth would rot.”

Here’s Australia’s experience along that line. According to Stoltzonburg, the English who settled that country (after the indigenous settlers) brought cattle, horses, and sheep along with them. These were new to Australia, and the native ecosystem was not accustomed to dealing with such foreign waste products — hey, kangaroos were hard enough to clean up after.

Dung beetles are more specialized, it seems, than one might expect. The local ones “turned up their noses at the cow pies, weighing a pound or two each, deposited at a rate of a dozen per day, multiplied by the millions of cattle” at home on the range. I would have thought, “See one cow pie, you’ve seen ‘em all” but, apparently not. The native dung beetles were strictly biased in favor of the patriotic product. “Up to its ankles in high-grade fly habitat, the Australian government sent for backup.” It imported “savvy dung beetles,” trained on cattle, horses, and sheep in Europe and Africa, and “the dungscape began to melt.”

Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it?

Also, just how are we going to go about colonizing Mars?

A final thought: Lately, I have suspected that a lot of insects are actually in search of a personal relationship with human beings. (I’m not sure about dung beetles.) Stolzonburg doesn’t refer to this, but he doesn’t rule it out either. There has to be some reason they are so friendly and keep flying in your face. I’m convinced they like us and only want to make friends. How discouraging it must be to constantly get killed when all you want do is say hello.

Maude McDaniel is a Cumberland freelance writer. Her column appears on alternate Sundays in the Times-News.