Beyond Bees

November 20, 2023

In the hierarchy of cute animals, bees are certainly near the top. They’re small, fluffy, have big eyes, and wiggle their butts. Better yet, they pollinate our crops and make honey. What’s not to love?

These qualities have made campaigns to “Save the Bees” wildly successful in mobilizing communities to promote pollinator proliferation—even to the point where some areas have more bees than food to sustain them.¹ Though honey bees have been the traditional target of these efforts, more recent attention is being paid to native species.²

This is great news for bees, but as insect populations decline globally,³ they are not the only ones in dire need of good PR. Plenty of less appealing insects play important roles in the lives of humans and in their respective ecosystems.

For instance, hover flies are also pollinators, but unlike bees, their larvae are predators of crop-eating insects, like aphids and mealybugs. Just one hover fly larva can eat up to 400 aphids before it pupates to become an adult!⁴ And many hover flies have yellow and black stripes, making them a natural successor to bees in the realm of lovable insects.

Green lacewings are beautiful as adults, with wings that—as the name suggests—resemble delicate, iridescent lace. They, too, are predators of crop and garden pests. They eat so many in their few weeks as larvae that they have colloquially been dubbed “aphid lions.”⁵

But the importance of insects isn’t limited to agricultural roles. They are critical pieces of almost every terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. Even insects commonly considered pests are important to the stability of their ecosystems.

Apart from encyclopedia entries, the top Google search results for “termites” are all from pest management sources. Although they can surely pose threats to wooden structures, these social insects are key to recycling nutrients from dead and decaying wood back into the soil all over the world. They are critical for new plants to grow after old ones have died.

Maybe the day will come when people will proudly slap “Save the Cockroaches!” or “I Love Parasitoid Wasps” bumper stickers onto their cars, but this seems unlikely. (It should be noted that this author would happily promote these hypothetical decals.)

Even in the popularity contest of conservation funding, the most beloved insects are still falling short. Efforts to conserve monarch butterflies in North America have been helped significantly by public interest in the species. However, real support from the United States government, both at the federal and local levels, has been lacking.⁶ If one of the most recognizable insect species in America is struggling to get help, what hope is there for the ugly insects?

A greater issue at play than just the likeability of many insects is the lack of research about them. Insects are the most diverse group of animals on the planet, making up almost half of all known animal species.⁷ Yet for a variety of reasons—lack of funding, public interest, and government interest, among others—insects remain disproportionately understudied.^{8 9} How can we care about their preservation if we don’t even know what they do? And even further, if we don’t even know they exist?

The importance of bees and their popularity have both contributed to the exorbitant amount of research and funding they receive. These are by no means wasted, but perhaps if other insects garnered similar levels of attention, they would be similarly loved. Public support for insects and all the ways they keep our world running is one of the best things we can do to save them.

Instead of letting our affection and concern for insects stop at bees, use them as the gateway insect. Even something as small as not killing the silverfish in your bathroom is a step in the right direction. They might not be cute, but we need the creepy-crawlies all the same.

Sources

1. Charles, D. Why Urban Beekeeping Can Be Bad For Bees. NPR (2013). ↩

2. Mas, K. What we get wrong about saving the bees. Vox https://www.vox.com/videos/23833036/bees-agriculture-pollination-biodiversity (2023). ↩

3. Sánchez-Bayo, F. & Wyckhuys, K. A. G. Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers. Biol. Conserv. 232, 8–27 (2019). ↩

4. Syrphids (Flower Flies, or Hover Flies) / UC Statewide IPM Program (UC IPM). https://ipm.ucanr.edu/natural-enemies/syrphids/. ↩

5. Green Lacewing. https://texasinsects.tamu.edu/green-lacewing/. ↩

6. Harris, K. M., Hall, D. M. & Finke, D. L. Who cares about monarch butterflies? Comparing US State Wildlife Action Plans 2015–2025. Conserv. Lett. n/a, e12976. ↩

7. Ritchie, H. How many species are there? Our World in Data https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-species-are-there (2022). ↩

8. Titley, M. A., Snaddon, J. L. & Turner, E. C. Scientific research on animal biodiversity is systematically biased towards vertebrates and temperate regions. PLOS ONE 12, e0189577 (2017). ↩

9. Cardoso, P., Erwin, T. L., Borges, P. A. V. & New, T. R. The seven impediments in invertebrate conservation and how to overcome them. Biol. Conserv. 144, 2647–2655 (2011). ↩