Putting the Invisible World of Insects in the Spotlight... But Out of the Porch Light

An Eastern Tiger Swallowtail found on the native butterfly bush in our backyard! We always enjoy our visitors (Image Source: author)

We’ve all heard the phrase “things are not always as they seem,” and I’m sure that everyone’s had their own experience with finding this out for themselves. It’s one of those pieces of knowledge that can so easily slip our minds until we look back on a situation and it seems so obvious.

There is plenty that we are taught about in our world today; however, the fact remains that if we don’t know something, we simply don’t know it. It’s natural to not think about the things we can’t see, especially if we have no way of seeing it. So, with as little as they can be, it may not come as a surprise to you when I say that this very much applies to insects, too.

When we were in school, we were taught that insects are important to the ecosystems around us – pollinators give us our food, some bugs act as decomposers, some control the population of other pests, etc. However, when this is repeated back at us time and again, the words can lose their effect. They become things we know, but there becomes little meaning behind these words.

They’re simply…facts.

Some may say that this is because we don’t get to see what an unbalanced ecosystem, one without insects performing their vital roles, looks like. Others know for a fact that we are living in such unbalance and have simply become used to it.

After all, the specifics of how much of an impact our lifestyles have on these forces that support us may not be fully conveyed, and the sentiment is then lost.

Because all of those facts are true – pollinators do provide our food, and others do control other populations. And if we look at the effects of losing one or the other, we can see how vital they are to not only humans, but everything. For example, less pollinators equals less food produced (or at least, the process becomes more labor-intensive and expensive).

We can create an example like this for just about any insect you can think of. I recently had the privilege of speaking with Tad Yankowski, an Entomologist at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Butterfly House, who explained how ants, “our ecosystem engineers,” can make or break the area they inhabit by using the example of the invasive Japanese Pavement Ant in St. Louis.

Certain species of ants have certain actions they perform; some like to nest in wood, some create mounds, and some dig underground. These all play vital roles in the land around them. For example, those that dig underground may leave small tunnels that help aerate the soil and leave space for plants to grow.

However, when these species of ants are no longer present, the same is true for their positive effects. This was seen when the Japanese pavement ant was brought to St. Louis, supposedly by accident while importing orchids from Japan for the 1904 World’s Fair. These ants spread across the area and survived through the resources native ants had thrived on.

These native species of ants disappeared from the area, sometimes 20+ species at a time, along with their effects on the land they lived on, replaced solely by the Japanese pavement ant. Although these invasive ants still function in an ecosystem, it is not supposed to be this one. Plants and trees have a hard time growing where these ants are due to different patterns in soil aeration (so water and oxygen cannot reach), other ants are no longer present to pollinate and spread seeds…the list goes on. Although Japanese pavement ants are great decomposers, they are not great where they are not native.

We don’t have to import plants from around the world to make a large impact on local populations - there are plenty of smaller, seemingly harmless things we do that have a large impact on the insect world just in our backyards.

Yankowski highlighted one of these that, despite lighting our way on a daily basis, may slip by completely unnoticed. Outdoors lights kept on at nighttime disrupts many natural cycles and habits; they can attract and distract moths (major overnight pollinators), illuminate the way for predators to hunt down otherwise important insects and bugs, and, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, disrupt the circadian rhythm of wildlife, and even impact hibernation and migration patterns.

Other actions that have become normal among humans have massive impacts, an example of this being the use of insecticides. This one may seem obvious; if there’s a pest in your garden, you want to keep it away. However, it is often overlooked that these chemicals do not target a specific species, but all insects that visit your garden; Yankowski asked me to guess how many bugs I thought a single bottle of this could kill. I had guessed thousands, and he said higher. Hundreds of thousands? Closer, but…

“Even just a $10-15 bottle contains enough active ingredient to kill 80-90 million bugs. I know, right? And it can stay on the surface of these plants for up to 90 days or so…and they’re using this in agricultural fields, by the sides of roads, and people use it all the time in their backyards, like if they host an event or have an annoying pest. And then they wonder why they aren’t seeing bees or butterflies anymore.”

So many things we have learned as part of our lifestyles are destructive to the little creatures that surround us. Even the turf lawns we see everywhere don’t offer as much protection as the native prairies grasses our ecosystem is used to, and can make insects easier to hunt or create more exposure to extreme temperatures.

Not all the impacts our actions have are direct, either; we’ve all heard about temperature changes due to climate change, and how it’s effecting weather. But how is this weather effecting the non-human populations experiencing it?

One example we all may have noticed this past year is the migration of monarch butterflies. Every fall, it can become a sort of game to count how many of these black and orange insects you can find flitting around, moving to the warmer south for the cold winter. If you think you didn’t count as many this year as you have in the past, you aren’t overthinking it.

Because of the record heat of the past year, the prairie flowers that usually provide nectar to fuel the butterflies’ travels got the signal that it was time to bloom earlier than they usually do. Then, when it was time for the butterflies to come down, many of these flowers had already gone.

It can be easy to lose hope when all the facts are put together; so many aspects of the lives we’re so used to living are destroying such a vital part of the world around us. We must remember that every small change builds, and that all of us, as part of the world, can act in a way to change for the better.

Yankowski pointed out that for how widespread their reach is, pollinators get about 90% of their nectar from gardens! This means that if you live in a city, even just a few plants along a sidewalk or on a balcony can have an impact on pollinators in the area.

And if you live more in the suburbs, Yankowski says, “If you’re going to have a garden, a great move would be to make it part of the ecosystem. So, instead of thinking ‘Oh, this bug is eating my plant and wrecking how pretty it is,’ what I like to think is ‘Because of my garden, I was able to help feed this bug that is now going to pollinate my plants, or help the soil, or do whatever its behavior may be.”

Growing plants native to the area can attract even more benefits to your backyard, like more birds and bugs, healthier soil, less water runoff, and according to many who have switched from turf lawn, simply make it prettier.

Another small way to help protect the insects around you is to turn off your lights outside at nighttime – visit DarkSky Missouri if you’re interested in what kinds of lights to use and what impact you can have on environment around you.

Yankowski pointed out that although each small change will build on the last, there are some massive issues left to deal with. Sure, we can improve our backyards to be more insect-friendly and part of the ecosystem, but that doesn’t change the fact that a majority of Iowa is corn and soybean farm where it was once native prairie, for example.

One of the best things we can do to help restore our natural ecosystems is talk to our politicians about policy that will protect the land around us, along with its inhabitants. Large-scale change will prevent the further mass killing of insects and destruction of the land we live on.

No matter how we decide to help, big or small, this change involves each one of us. And if you’re not sure where to start, a great first step is learning more about the area around you and teaching others about how certain actions result in certain impacts that may otherwise be too small to see.