Inquiry #3

By Te Arai & Dom

Inquiry #3 No Inscets on Earth

Thesis:

Life on earth could not be as it is without insects.

Intro:

So this inquiry explains what would or could happen if all the world's insects just disappeared, it answers what could happen to the human race, the animal kingdom, and the environment. Over half of the world's species are various different species of insects, so you would notice if they all just disappeared in one day. We will start off by talking about some of the annoying insects in the world, and how they impact the environment.

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So what would or could happen if all types of flies just disappeared in one day? Flies are composters but not all species compost equally. The most effective composters are the blowflies, flesh flies, bush flies, and soldier flies. Think of it this way: if we lived in a world without flies, our streets would have dead animals, rotting leaves and logs and human and animal waste. Even though they may seem annoying most of the time.They pollinate the food that goes on the shelves at the supermarket. In theory, we could live without them because we have microbes that clean up most of the world's waste but it would still be very messy.

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Ok so we talked about flies and what they do, now let's talk about cockroaches and how they help with the ocean and environment. Although most of us think cockroaches as vermin, they do have a useful ecological role. Cockroaches are professional recyclers, chowing just about anything, including dead plants, animals, and animal waste. In the wild, the waste of roaches nourishes growing plants, continuing the cycle. So even though we all think they are disgusting and have no good purpose in the world, they do have qualities that help us and the environment a lot. If they disappeared rubbish would overflow into the ocean.

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Like we said before, if cockroaches disappeared our waste would overflow into the ocean and that would kill all sea life. What about mosquitoes?, they pretty much just annoy and bite you in the middle of the night. You would think there's nothing good about them, well there is, they supply most swamp ecosystems food and if they disappeared, those animals would die of starvation. And the predators of the swamp animals would die from lack of food. And that would continue until mankind and all life would be wiped from the earth. This would be the case with most insect species disappearing.

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So do insects positively affect our environment? Yes, they do. Insects are critical components of many ecosystems, where they perform many important functions. They aerate the soil, pollinate blossoms, and control plant pests. As decomposers, insects create topsoil, the good-rich layer of soil that helps plants grow. So if we didn’t have insects, the soil all around the world wouldn’t be very good to grow plants and food in. So that would lead to a lot of empty shelves at supermarkets.

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Could mankind survive without insects? To be honest, it would be very difficult, insect species pollinate ⅓ of the world's crops, useful predators of non-insect pests would be gone, we would have to resort to wind pollination and lots of ecosystems would collapse. No insects mean small birds and frogs die off, the animals that eat them die, etc. Maybe we start leading a vegetarian lifestyle? No. No insects means next to no pollinated plants.

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What would happen to mankind if insects disappeared? As it turns out, humans would be in big trouble. It is estimated within 50 years, all mankind would die off. Sometimes the wind and other animals are able to assist with pollination, but the majority is done by insects. Without these pollinators, most plant life on earth would disappear. And with it goes a lot of the ecosystems that have been slowly developing. No plants equals no food for a lot of ecosystems which causes other ecosystems to collapse and them more ecosystems collapse etc. So when you think about it, we really need insects, like really badly.

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Does air pollution affect insects?. It actually affects most types of insects that are affected by Pollution in cities that damage the ecosystems. Results from studies show insects have been feeding off of plants that have been growing poorly which is due to air pollution. Which suggests high levels of air pollution may be cascading on the community of herbivore creatures. Although ever since lockdown, ocean, air, and environmental pollutants have gone down by a lot. There have been sightings of dolphins in the rivers of Venice which has never happened before, reports of fin whales being spotted off the coast of southern France and there have been articles that people in north India could see the Himalayas for the first time in decades due to less air pollution. And even there in New Zealand, it has helped a lot, scientists have estimated that during lockdown, air pollution went down by 75% on average, at least a third of Aucklanders reduced their exposure to traffic pollution by 90% during lockdown.

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Insect populations are going down,but why? Insect populations are going down due to a multitude of reasons like habit change wrought by humans turning forests into farmland, a decline of small family farms known for open pastures, hedges, small weedy plants like wildflowers which are all perfect for insects. Here is some evidence of their decline: in 2015 the insect population all together was 10 quintillion(10,000,000,000,000,000,000), the number of different species was 91,000, but over the course of 5 years, the number of species has come down to 73,000, so around about 16.38% (18,000)insect species have gone extinct. This is bad.

Conclusion:

So we have talked about all the disgusting and annoying insects and their purposes in helping us and the environment. We also covered the question: do insects positively affect the environment and how?. And we have concluded what would happen to mankind if insects disappeared, why are insect populations going down and is the pollution of the world causing it. So now we have talked about insects and their purposes in helping the environment we hope that next time you find a bee drowning you will save it or you will look where you are putting your feet just in case you are about to stand on an insect or even invest in a worm farm or composter to dispose of you food scraps and also supply some food for insects because we all need to do our bit to try and keep insects species from plummeting because we need them desperately to survive because otherwise this world is screwed.