Opinion: Butterflies aren’t expendable. Our brittle reality depends on them, too.
By Michael S. Engel March 1 Michael S. Engel is a paleontologist and entomologist at the University of Kansas.
We now know that this is not true. Similar losses have played out time and again to the point at which our insects are in decline. Ecosystems are much like the game of Jenga: You pull too many blocks from the tower, and it collapses. We remove one biological reserve here, we extirpate a series of species there, we pollute, we fragment, we introduce invasive species, all to the point of eventual catastrophe.
It is dangerous to set an entire group of organisms apart from all others when referring to their impact on the broader economy of nature. In these matters, everything is intertwined. Among all of life’s creatures, insects are some of the most vital, whether we notice their many services or not. By the sheer fact of their staggering diversity and vast ecological connectedness, insects are interwoven into the fundamental functions of virtually every ecosystem.
As insects are disappearing, plants everywhere are experiencing a diminution in natural pollination. Without these critical animal species, the basic reproduction of these plants would be compromised and, for many, would grind to a halt. These plants are our foodstuffs , the timber for our homes, the source and templates for many of our pharmaceuticals, and the natural products from which we derive so many other materials. The world’s forests generate the very oxygen we breathe.
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