Pollinators

When you think about the benefits of having insects around, pollination is probably the first thing that springs to mind. There’s a good reason for this, since 87% of all plant species require animal pollination and most of this is delivered by insects. In fact, around three-quarters of all crop types grown by humans need to be pollinated by insects.

Bees are the most famous pollinators, bumbling between flowers on sunny days, their gentle buzzing part of the soundtrack of summer. But all kinds of insects play important roles as pollinators, including flies, beetles, butterflies, moths and hoverflies.

Keep calm and carrion

If you’re not keen on the idea of piles of poo left littering the landscape, imagine how much worse things would be without the host of insects that feed on carrion. Animal carcasses could take months to rot without the swift action of maggots and beetles, like the bright, orange-splashed sexton beetles. Male and female sexton beetles work together to dig beneath the bodies of dead birds and small mammals, burying them to create a larder for their growing larvae.

But falling insect numbers have already been linked to declines in some of the species that rely on them, like the spotted flycatcher, a bird whose UK population plummeted by 93% between 1967 and 2016. These aerial acrobats swoop from a perch to snatch flying insects, both to feed themselves and to supply to their chicks, so their survival is dependent on finding enough insect prey. If our insects disappear, so will the countless other species that depend on them.