Introduction to Insects

In simplest terms, life (as we know it) exists on planet earth because of a global cycle of
production and consumption that hinges almost exclusively on green plants as primary producers
and insects as primary consumers.

Without green plants and the organic molecules they produce through photosynthesis, all animal
life would collapse from starvation. Without insects and other decomposers, green plants would
quickly exhaust their nutrient supplies, dead organic matter would accumulate in putrid, rotting
heaps, and many species of flowering plants would become extinct for lack of insect pollinators.

The Dominance of Insects

 Number of Species
Entomologists estimate that over 800,000 insect species have been named and described since
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) founded the modern system of nomenclature (genus and species)
for all plants and animals. The entire plant kingdom, by comparison, contains between 400,000
and 500,000 species. In the animal kingdom, the "lower" invertebrates account for around
200,000 species, while vertebrates total only about 50,000 species.

 Number of individuals
Another way to look at the dominance of insects is to consider the distribution and density of
individual species or populations. Because of their small size and high reproductive potential,
insect populations often grow to epic proportions.

 Distribution

A third way to assess the dominance of insects is to examine their abundance and diversity in a
wide range of ecological habitats. Indeed, insects are found in virtually every terrestrial and
fresh-water environment on the face of the earth. They live everywhere from mountain tops, tide
pools at the seashore., underground caverns, polar ice caps, hot springs
 Impact of Insects

Insects have a direct impact on agricultural food production by chewing the leaves of crop plants,
sucking out plant juices, boring within the roots, stems or leaves, and spreading plant pathogens.
They feed on natural fibers, destroy wooden building materials, ruin stored grain, and accelerate
the process of decay.

The economic impact of insects is measured not only by the market value of products they
destroy and the cost of damage they inflict but also by the money and resources expended on
prevention and control of pest outbreaks.

Insects have also supplied unique natural products, they regulate the population densities of
many potential pest species, they dispose of our wastes, bury the dead, and recycle organic
nutrients.

 Insects as Food

Insects represent an important food source for a wide variety of other animal species. Freshwater
game fish such as trout, bass, and bream feed extensively on aquatic insects like mayflies,
stoneflies, or hellgrammites. Many toads, frogs, turtles, snakes, and lizards also consume insects
as a major part of their diet. There are even some insectivorous mammals: shrews, moles, bats,
armadillos, and anteaters, for example.
  Ecological Impact

As consumers, scavengers, and decomposers, insects play a vital role in the biogeochemical
cycling of nutrients. Insects help aerate the soil, improve its retention of rainwater, and enhance
its tilth. As parasites and predators of other organisms, insects are part of a natural system of
checks and balances that strengthens community stability and prevents explosive population
growth from overrunning natural resources.

Insects also play an essential role as pollinators of flowering plants (angiosperms). These plants
are dominant producers in many terrestrial ecosystems, but they cannot reproduce without insect
intermediaries to carry pollen (the male gametophyte) from flower to flower.

Products of Beneficial Insects

 Since ancient times, honey bees (Apis mellifera) have been valued for
the honey and beeswax they produce.
 A silkworm, Bombyx mori, is the source of a unique natural fiber used to make silkcloth.
This species now exists only in captivity where it is reared to maturity on a diet of
mulberry leaves.
 Shellac - Laccifer lacca, a tiny scale insect that grows on soapberry and acacia trees in
India and Burma, is the source of lac, a sticky resin that forms the principle ingredient of
commercial shellac. Twigs bearing the scale insects are heated to extract and purify the
resin.
 Cochineal is a scarlet pigment extracted from Dactylopius coccus, a scale insect that
lives on prickly pear cacti in Mexico and Central America. First used by Aztec Indians
as a medicine, a textile dye, and a body paint. The pigment was highly valued for the
intensity and permanence of its color
 Tannic acid is a chemical compound widely used in the leather industry (for tanning and
dying) and in the manufacture of some inks. The trees produce gall tissue in response to
a chemical substance secreted by tiny wasps (family Cynipidae) that infest the trees.
Insects are a part of:

 Culture, Religion, and Aesthetics

 Insects in Language and Literature
 Science and Technology
 Medical and Therapeutic Value

Reasons for Success

Insects have a unique combination of characteristics which, as a whole, have given them an
unusual survival advantage. These attributes include an exoskeleton, small body size, the ability
to fly, a high reproductive potential, complete metamorphosis, and adaptability in an ever-
changing environment.

 Exoskeleton

This exoskeleton is a marvelous structure that not only gives shape and support to the body's soft
tissues, but also provides protection from attack or injury, minimizes the loss of body fluids in
both arid and freshwater environments, and assures mechanical advantage to muscles for
strength and agility in movement. It can resist both physical and chemical attack. It is covered
by an impervious layer of wax that prevents desiccation. Much of the exoskeleton is fabricated
from chitin, a polysaccharide that binds with various protein molecules to form a body wall that
may be as flexible and elastic as rubber or as hard and rigid as some metals. Freedom of
movement is ensured by membranes and joints in the exoskeleton.

 Small Size
Most species are between 2 and 20 mm (0.1 - 1.0 inch) in length, although they range in size
from giant moths that would nearly cover your computer screen to tiny parasitic wasps that could
hide inside the period at the end of this sentence.

Another advantage of small size is the minimal resources needed for survival and reproduction.
A crumb is a feast; a dewdrop quenches thirst; a pebble provides shade.
In some cases, food requirements are so modest that an insect may live on a single plant or
animal for its entire life and never exhaust its food supply.

Finally, small size is a big advantage to insects that must avoid predation. They can hide in the
cracks of a rock, beneath the bark of a tree, behind the petal of a flower, or under a blade of
grass. Small size, together with adaptations in body shape and coloration, gives many species
the ability to blend so well with their environment that they become virtually undetectable.

 Flight

Insects are the only invertebrates that can fly. It was also an efficient means of transportation,
allowing populations to expand more quickly into new habitats and exploit new resources.

The forces of natural selection have shaped insect flight into a remarkably efficient process
employing principles of aerodynamics that human engineers do not yet fully understand.

More than 200 species, including moths, dragonflies, locusts, flies, and beetles are known to
migrate over long distances by air. The migratory locust, Schistocerca gregaria, can fly for up
to 9 hours without stopping. Large swarms occasionally traverse the Mediterranean Sea.

Speed and manuverability are traits usually associated with the more highly advanced orders of
insects, but some primitive insects (notably the dragonflies) are remarkably agile fliers: they can
hover, turn while hovering, and even fly backwards or sideways.
  Reproductive Potential

Reproductive success is one of the most significant measures of an organism's fitness.

In insect populations, females often produce large numbers of eggs (high fecundity), most of the
eggs hatch (high fertility), and the life cycle is relatively short (often as little as 2-4 weeks).
Together, these three characteristics enable insects to produce remarkably large numbers of
offspring.

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch scientist who first discovered single-celled organisms, was
probably the first person to comprehend the reproductive potential of insects. In 1687, he reared
blow flies (probably Calliphora erythrocephala) on a diet of owl meat and found that females
produced an average of 144 progeny: half male, half female. He calculated that a single pair of
flies could give rise to 10,368 offspring in the third generation, 746,496 in the fourth generation,
53,747,712 in the fifth generation, and 3,869,835,264 in the sixth generation.

Calculations like this are completely unrealistic because they ignore all the limiting factors (like
food supply, predation, climate, and disease) that keep natural populations in check. But the
numbers do illustrate how quickly insect populations can grow, and they help explain why pest
outbreaks often seem to develop so suddenly.

Since most insects die before they ever have an opportunity to reproduce, a high reproductive
potential is the species' best chance for survival. Many adaptations help maximize this potential.
Most females, for example, can store sperm for months or years within the spermatheca, a
special region of the reproductive system. A single mating can supply a female with enough
sperm to fertilize all the eggs she will produce in her lifetime. An unbalanced sex ratio, where
females outnumber males, is another way to maximize reproductive potential. Since most
insects are not monogamous, a few males can supply sperm for a large number of females. And
finally, there are many species (e.g. aphids, scale insects, thrips, and midges) where males are
entirely absent -- all members of the population are female and contribute offspring through a
process of asexual reproduction.
  Metamorphosis

Most insects undergo significant developmental changes as they grow from immatures to adults.
These changes, collectively known as metamorphosis, may involve physical, biochemical, and/or
behavioral alterations that promote survival, dispersal, and reproduction of the species.

In the more primitive insects, most of these changes occur gradually as the animal matures:
organs of reproduction and flight develop incrementally during the immature stages and become
functional only in adults.
Since this transformation process is slow and does not include all body tissues (incomplete
metamorphosis) the immatures and adults share many characteristics -- they often live in similar
habitats and feed on similar types of food.

More advanced insects, however, undergo complete metamorphosis -- a dramatic transformation

in form and function between the immature (larval) and adult stages of development. In these
insects, a larva is primarily adapted for feeding and growth. It assimilates energy reserves
which, in some cases, will sustain the insect for the rest of its life. When fully grown, a larva
molts into a transitional stage, called the pupa, and begins a period of massive internal and
external reorganization. Body organs and tissues encoded by larval DNA are disassembled and
rebuilt according to a second DNA blueprint that had been repressed during larval life.

An adult insect (imago) eventually emerges from within the pupal exoskeleton bearing little or
no resemblance to its larval form. Its primary function is dispersal and reproduction.

In the class Insecta, only 9 out of 28 orders undergo complete metamorphosis, yet these 9 orders
represent about 86% of all insect species alive today.
  Adaptability

A combination of large and diverse populations, high reproductive potential, and relatively short
life cycles, has equipped most insects with the genetic resources to adapt quickly in the face of a
changing environment.

Adaptation is an ongoing process. Populations must continually change as new resources appear
and old ones disappear. Just within the few thousand years since humans began roaming the
earth, insects have acquired a taste for new products that would never be a part of their "natural"
environment: e.g., glue and wallpaper paste, book bindings, cardboard, paintbrushes, tanned
leather products, the corks of wine bottles, mummies, stuffed museum specimens, chocolate,
ginger, yeast cakes, tobacco, pepper, and even potent drugs like marijuana and opium.

Perhaps the most remarkable example of insect adaptation in this century has been the speed
with which pest populations have developed resistance to a broad range of chemical and
biological insecticides. After World War II, public health officials in the United States made a
concerted effort to eradicate the house fly (Musca domestica) with DDT. For several years the
campaign seemed promising: fly populations decreased and optimism ran high. But a few
resistant flies managed to survive because they were endowed with an enzyme that could
detoxify DDT. These survivors reproduced and passed this resistant trait to their offspring. In
time, DDT-resistant flies repopulated their environment and the species now appears to be
capable of surviving the chemical.