What if All of Earth's Insects Keeled Over?

Current Event Review by Tommy Maldonado

The article, “What if All of Earth’s Insects Keeled Over?” by Adam Hadhazy, discusses what the world would be like without insects. The article starts off by stressing the importance of insects, boldly stating that “we humans and most other complex life on the planet would be in dire shape without them.” Hadhazy then goes on to state the pros and cons of not having insects. The pros include not having them as little annoyances, not having dangerous insect-carried diseases, like malaria and dengue fever, and farmers no longer needing to use insecticides, of which more than 500 million pounds are used each year. While the pros are rather large, they are nonetheless greatly outweighed by the cons. Hadhazy starts with the immediate effect the absence of insects would have on plants. He states, “approximately 80 percent of all of the world's plant life are angiosperms, or flowering plants. In order to reproduce, these plants must have pollen physically transferred from a male anther to the female stigma within a flower.” Because such a large number of plants require pollination, which is namely done by insects, if the insects were absent, the angiosperms would all die. In turn, Hadhazy explains, all of the humans would die. This is because between 50% to 90% of the human diet comes directly from flowering plants, such as staple grains, like rice and wheat, fruits, and vegetables. Additionally, many flowering plants are food for animals lower on the food chain that we also eat, like cows, chickens, and even some freshwater fish. The absence of these animals would have a domino effect on the rest of the food chain. The two final consequences of the eradication of insects, as stated by Hadhazy, are the absence of insect-products and lack of decomposition of dead organic matter. The former is a simple disappearance of insect-products like honey and silk, while the latter is a little bit more complicated. Insect, bacteria, and fungi are the major decomposers of organic material, so the world would build up a large amount of dead matter, like dead trees, animal carcasses, and human bodies, without them. The last part of this article talks about how this process of eliminating insects is going on right now. Hadhazy states the two major problems are that “pesticide exposure, disease and habitat loss has decimated wild and commercially hived honeybees in recent years” and that “global climate change is throwing off the delicate synchronicity of insect hatchings and flower blooms in the spring.” Overall, this article states the pros and cons of losing insects, of which the cons outweigh the pros, and finally concludes by saying that this process is going on right now.

This article is excruciatingly relevant to the world around us. We are in constant contact with insects every single day and usually don’t think twice when killing a mosquito or bumble bee that is bothering us. This article lets us know that, in our every-day lives, we should try to kill as few insects as possible, even if they are extremely annoying. We take these insects for granted and don’t quite realize that our lives actually depend on them. If we don’t monitor global climate change, pesticide exposure, disease, and habitat loss of these insects, whole species could go extinct, leaving a devastating effect on human life. In general, this article is very relevant to our society right now because of the underappreciated yet crucial role that insects play in the world.

This article was had strengths and weaknesses in different areas. One of its main strengths was its catchy opening. The article begins with the quote, “Ewwww… a bug!” to relate to the most common reaction to bugs. By saying this, the author immediately connects with the reader and captures his or her attention. Another strength of this article was it had credible sources of information. For example, it took information from Goggy Davidowitz, a professor in the departments of entomology and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. By presenting the source of this information as a credible one, the reader is already more ready to accept the facts that soon will follow. One last strength this article had was its ability to make the reader realize that this crisis, in which insects are disappearing nonstop, is going on today. For example, this is made blatantly clear when Davidowitz is quoted, saying, “This is not an abstract thought process… This is happening now." While the article had other strengths along with these, there were also a couple of weaknesses I found. For instance, while the author argued that the disappearance was an ongoing problem, he did not provide very convincing evidence. He stated that there were certain communities of insects that were being wiped out, and some species are being affected by climate change, but there is no immediate issue that concerns insects as a whole. The second weakness that I found was that the author never provided a clear call to action. Though he stated that climate change, pesticide exposure, disease, and habitat loss of these insects is slowly wiping certain populations out, he never stated how the reader could solve this problem.

Hyperlink:

http://www.livescience.com/52752-what-if-all-insects-died.html

Citation:

Hadhazy, By Adam. "What If All of Earth's Insects Keeled Over?" LiveScience. TechMedia Network,11 
Nov. 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.