For example most of what we would consider insects actually live in the dirt around our homes. Several studies have shown that there are literally millions of mites and springtails living in every acre or dirt in the United States.
As for inside our actual houses, a study in collected arthropods from houses North Carolina. The data showed an average of 10, specimens collected from each home. Most of these were obviously too small to see with the naked eye but are living throughout the rooms; in floors, carpets, bedding, drains, basically everywhere. According to the Smithsonian Institute, there are at least Ten Quintillion. That may sound like some made-up word but, indeed, that is 10 followed by fifteen zeros.
To put that into perspective, that is more than one million bugs per person! And if you include mites, spiders and springtails, some studies indicate that the number of creepy crawlers may be as much as million per human. So, next time you are alone in your yard, remember that you have quite a few creatures hanging out with you! What is an Insect? Along with plants, insects are at the foundation of the food web, and most of the plants and animals we eat rely on insects for pollination or food.
These services include:. We also depend on insects for silk, dyes, honey and medical and genetic research. But, aside from the services insects provide, they are simply fascinating animals that spark curiosity in humans, especially children.
These incredible creatures exhibit many extraordinary behaviors that are unthinkable in other forms of life and have inspired technology that we use today, like drones! Take some time to really observe the insects in your backyard, what behaviors do you see that captivate you? Share the insect discoveries in your Florida yard using iNaturalist by visiting the following link: The Insect Effect Bioblitz.
New to iNaturalist? Visit our Facebook Insect Effect Bioblitz event page to learn more about how to participate. Have additional questions about this campaign or insects in general? Reach out to one of our featured scientists who are ready to answer your questions. Erwin found more than species of beetles in just 19 trees. Not individual beetles. Based on what he knew about the prevalence of this type of tree in the Panamanian forest and the prevalence of beetles compared to other kinds of insects, Erwin came up with a back-of-the-envelope calculation that every hectare of Panamanian forest could be home to as many as 41, species of insects — millions, maybe hundreds of millions, of individuals living in an area not much larger than a couple of soccer fields.
And this is why bugs, as a whole, beat humans in a pound-for-pound weigh-off. But even if you take what Peterson thinks is likely an underestimate of the average bug size — 0. This is a numbers game, and the bugs are very much ahead. Granted, all of these numbers come from extrapolation and estimation. One million species of insects have been named and documented, their type specimens sealed in jars or illustrated in books.
There may be more than 4 million species yet to be catalogued. Wasps, ants, flies and beetles all get in on that hot plant reproductive system action. And while not all the food we eat relies on pollinators , some of the really good stuff — almonds, avocados, many fruits and nuts, and the alfalfa that feeds our meat animals — does. Dung beetles save the U. Bugs matter, and if scientists know how many bugs are in a square meter or what those bugs weigh, they can get an idea of how capable the existing bug population is of doing all the jobs bugs do.
If you know how many pounds of bugs a single bird eats, then you know how many birds can live off the bugs in a Panamanian tree. And the answers to those questions are pretty important, because they tell you practical facts — like whether birds can survive in a given habitat, or whether the poop is going to start piling up on your farm. That means biomass is both a measure of the health of an insect community and of nature as a whole. And this is where the wacky science of weighing bugs starts to overlap with the existentially stressful science of watching helplessly as ecosystems collapse.
Invertebrates, a group that includes insects, are poorly studied by conservation biologists, at least in comparison to their numbers, and the health of their communities can vary a lot by location and species. For instance, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature the group whose research plays a big role in determining which species we consider endangered tracks only 3, species of terrestrial invertebrates — bugs, basically, plus worms and some mollusks.
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