Critically Endangered Insects Don’t Get as Much Publicity as They Deserve
by Cienna Short
Most of us are able to name at least one animal we know to be endangered. Unfortunately, this is just the reality of living in today’s world. There are numerous global issues that threaten the very integrity of wildlife and habitat conservation such as climate change and deforestation. These issues have steadily increased throughout the past several decades and continue to place an immense amount of pressure on the natural world. Many animals have become symbols of these issues and are given plenty of time in the spotlight in an effort to make the public aware of their situation.
But, it would be impossible to make known to the public every kind of animal that is facing population decline. Unfortunately, there’s an extraordinary amount of species that the majority of people are completely unaware of even existing, let alone being endangered. So, which animals are missing from this narrative?
Don’t Bug Out
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), there are 9,355 potentially endangered insect species that exist in our world today (Wang, Z. et al, 2021). The wellbeing of thousands of species of insects is heading in a downward trajectory at an alarmingly fast rate. Not only are insects experiencing a decline in numbers, but they’re also experiencing a decline in diversity. With so many species of insects facing such tremendously negative circumstances, you would think the public would be more aware of such issues, but the reality is most people have no idea.
Advocating for the Insects
Insects are studied significantly less often than other animals such as mammals and birds. And, as mentioned before, they experience much less time in the spotlight than other animals do, meaning members of the public tend to have less knowledge about them overall. Of course, some people are put off by insects altogether making them less inclined to want to learn about them, which could play a part in this disparity. Additionally, insects are hard to study due to their small size which makes them difficult to track accurately. Because of this, they tend to be excluded from conservation policies, which is the exact opposite of what they need.
Conservation in the Digital Age
Conservation culturomics is a relatively new field that has emerged out of the digital age. Culturomics is the study of human culture, so conservation culturomics involves studying how human culture plays a role in conservation. One of the best ways to study conservation culturomics is by turning to none other than the World Wide Web, specifically search engines like Google and social media platforms like Twitter.
Using the tools and techniques of conservation culturomics, scientists have performed a relatively simple experiment that ended with some pretty big results.
Scientists Use Google, Too
The first step of this experiment was downloading critical information for each of the 9,355 potentially threatened insect species. This critical information included the scientific name of each species, the common name of each species, the trend in its population (decreasing, increasing, or stable), as well as an overall assessment of the species’ wellbeing according to the IUCN (extinct, critically endangered, endangered, threatened, near threatened, vulnerable, or least concern).
The scientists then took this data and began to do what most people do: they Googled it. They searched the scientific and common names of each species on Google and Google Scholar. They also completed an Ngram search on each species, meaning they were able to look up the number of relevant books that have been published since the year 1500. Similarly, they evaluated the number of Tweets and re-Tweets pertaining to each kind of insect. The number of search results on each platform, Google, Google Scholar, Ngram, and Twitter, for each insect were then calculated and compared.
Long Absent, Soon Forgotten
After careful analysis of the data, it was concluded that the relationship between the conservation status of insects and the interest of the public was negatively correlated. In other words, the more endangered the insect, the less it’s Googled, written about, or Tweeted about. Overall, endangered insects receive less attention than more common ones. This would explain why so many people are unaware of the conservation crisis that thousands of species of insects are subjected to.
Why Should We Care About Bugs?
Bugs get a bad wrap. They’re often thought of as creepy, crawly, and just plain gross, but like every living organism they play a vital role in our world. Some insects are pollinators that are directly responsible for many of the fruits and vegetables that we can enjoy. They’re also a source of food for other animals like birds and amphibians, among others. Another unique role they play is that of decomposer, breaking down dead organic materials.
Insects are important and they need our help. If we don’t begin to actively advocate for the conservation of endangered insects the consequences would be significant. The good news is that there’s still time and studies like this one help bring to the surface problems that would otherwise go unseen.
So get out there and Google about insects.
References
Wang, Z., Zeng, J., Meng, W., Lohman, D.J. and Pierce, N.E. (2021), Out of sight, out of mind: public and research interest in insects is negatively correlated with their conservation status. Insect Conserv Divers, 14: 700–708. https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12499
