Our Earth is home to an estimated 5.5 million species of insects, with only one fifth of these named. Considered as the most diverse animals, these creatures account for about 80% of them. Sometimes beautiful, often weird, but always fascinating, they offer immeasurable services to our ecosystems, alternately pollinating plants, keeping pests at bay, removing waste and providing food to humans and wildlife.
They may also be the least loved beings of the animal kingdom – something which comes to light when we lavish attention on larger and cuter animals threatened by climate change, such as polar bears and pandas, and ignore the smaller creatures among us. But with 500,000 species facing extinction, scientists are sounding the alarm over an insect apocalypse.
There are many ways we can avoid this, but perhaps the first – and most counter-intuitive – step should be reassessing our relationship to insects. As a poet and scholar, I believe art and literature can lend a hand.
