[Pollinator] Where Is the Love for Bugs?

[Scott Black]

 <http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/> Green - Energy, the Environment and the
Bottom Line


October 13, 2011, 8:31 am

 

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/where-is-the-love-for-bugs/


Where Is the Love for Bugs?

By RACHEL NUWER <http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/author/rachel-nuwer/> 

"If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with
little change," the biologist E.O. Wilson once wrote. But if invertebrates
were to vanish, he said, "I doubt that the human species could last more
than a few months." 

Pedro CardosoThe deserta wolf-spider of Portugal, which is not protected and
has never been studied.

Although Dr. Wilson has been appealing for invertebrate conservation for
decades, few policy makers or environmental groups have taken heed. But a
growing number of scientists are determined to change that. 

Among them is Pedro Cardoso, an entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution
in Washington and the University of the Azores in Portugal who was the lead
author of a recent article
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320711002874>
addressing the problem in the journal Biological Conservation. 

"Nowadays there's a great concern about biodiversity in general, but this is
usually focused on vertebrates, while invertebrates are largely neglected,"
he said in an interview. "This is a good time to start changing the current
thinking that only some species are worth preserving and start thinking
about the smaller components of diversity." 

By smaller, of course, he means physical size - not abundance or importance.
Invertebrates are essential for daily activities that Homo sapiens and
countless other species rely on. Pollinators like bees and butterflies
ensure crop production, oysters and mussels filter water, and invertebrates
ranging from mosquitoes to shrimp serve as a major food source.

In the United States, insects alone provide so-called ecosystem services (a
growing field of academic study) valued at $57 billion annually.
Invertebrates spin the web that holds ecological systems together.

There is no shortage of cool invertebrate facts. More than 25,000 species of
arthropods occupy a single acre of rain forest in the Amazon. There is more
ant biomass in the soil of the Serengeti plains than there is of all surface
mammals combined. Some jumping spiders are as smart as mice in the way they
learn and memorize. About 80 percent of all known species are invertebrates,
with beetles alone accounting for at least 10 times as many species as all
vertebrates combined. 

For entomologists like Dr. Cardoso, the urgency of calling more attention to
invertebrates arises partly from potential extinction crises driven by human
activity. Invertebrates are vulnerable to many of the same threats that
beloved species like tigers and pandas are, even if the layman understands
far less about their ecological functions. 

With an estimated 3,000 species being lost each year, or eight species a
day, it is conceivable that many will vanish before scientists even know
they existed. 

Globally, invertebrates are largely neglected in conservation studies and
policy-making. In compiling its Red List of Threatened Species
<http://www.iucnredlist.org/about/summary-statistics> , considered the go-to
database for animals at risk, the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature <http://www.iucn.org/>  surveyed less than one-half of 1 percent
of arthropods and 4 percent of mollusks. Most vertebrates, on the other
hand, have already been assessed. 

Given their roles in maintaining a healthy planet, the invertebrates'
relative absence from these lists and the resulting lack of conservation
support is "markedly inappropriate," the researchers write. 

So why the lack of love for bugs? To hear the researchers tell it, the
reasons can be broken down into what one might call the seven deadly sins of
invertebrate conservation, with blame shared by both scientists and society
at large.

For starters, the public is largely unaware of the good things invertebrates
do for us. As ushers of plague, famine, and pestilence, insects get a
particularly bad rap (bees and butterflies excepted). And public support is
vital to fund-raising and the passage of legislation on species protection. 

"It's the public who votes on politicians, and politicians who decide what
kind of science is or isn't funded," Dr. Cardoso said. "If these problems
are solved, the rest will follow."

The researchers suggest fostering public interest in invertebrates through
deeper news coverage, documentary film-making and the dissemination of
photographs, books and art. 

"If you have a grizzly bear or a beautiful bird, many people are engaged
right away," says Mace Vaughan, director of the Pollinator Conservation
Program <http://www.xerces.org/pollinator-conservation/>  at the Xerces
Society <http://www.xerces.org/> , a nonprofit based in Portland, Ore., that
is dedicated to protecting invertebrates. "People think all invertebrates
have an ick factor, but in fact almost all don't." 

Aside from pollination, he said in an interview, most people are unaware of
roles that insects play, such as managing other pest species and moving the
energy that plants capture from the sun into other trophic levels of an
ecosystem. 

Stakeholders like forest managers or policy makers are also at fault. Many
assume that protecting large animals like jaguars or rhinos will in turn
help tiny invertebrates survive. Dr. Cardoso and other researchers say that
common assumption is largely untested and unsupported. 

A better solution would be to simply include invertebrates on lists of
threatened species and draft protection measures tailored to invertebrates,
they say. 

Another challenge is addressing a shortfall of taxonomists, those patient
few who spend their days identifying specimens: they have become a rare
breed as doctoral candidates in the sciences opt for more modern fields of
study. Amateurs and hobbyists can fill the gap, though, thanks to digital
advances that enable any enthusiast to submit data and images of new
specimens to online databases. 

The Xerces Society is a big fan of citizen science. Thanks to volunteers
combing their backyards and community gardens, the rusty-patched bumble bee
- a prolific pollinator that is currently in steep decline - was identified
in 13 new sites that can now be protected. 

The final impediment, of course, is the sheer dimension of the unknown: most
species of invertebrates have yet to be discovered, much less counted or
studied in terms of their adaptation to changes to their habitat. 

Financing and logistical support will be crucial for getting such efforts
off the ground, Dr. Cardoso said - but the baseline support "must come from
the public in general." 

"It's relatively easy to overcome these problems," he said. "By saving
invertebrates, we're saving biodiversity. There's no way around this." 

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_______

 

Scott Hoffman Black

Executive Director

     The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

Chair

     IUCN Butterfly Specialist Group

 

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

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