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on the wind. Male stag beetles use their jaws to fight over mates, while male stalk-eyed flies (so named because their eyes are suspended on long, slender stalks on either side of their head) face off against one another – the one whose eyes are furthest apart winning the competition, and the female. Picture-wing flies perform elaborate dances for their mates, while fireflies and glow-worms use light-emitting bacteria in their bottoms to attract a partner. In dance flies, a group of small black flies that swarm in clouds above streams and ponds on a summer’s eve, the usual pattern of sexual selection is sometimes reversed, with males providing expensive nuptial gifts to their mates – small dead insects carefully wrapped in silk – so that they are fussy about whom they choose, preferring large females who will have many eggs. To earn their gift, females have evolved swollen legs that make them look larger and thus fool the males. Some insects, such as earwigs and shield bugs, care for their offspring, even sacrificing their life to save that of their young. Corpse-eating carrion beetles look after their offspring, but if they have too many they casually consume the surplus, ensuring an adequate supply of dead meat for the remainder. No doubt there are many more marvellous behaviours that remain to be discovered, if we ever find the time to look.
    In terms of numbers of individuals, insects rule supreme. A single leaf-cutter ant nest in the forests of South America can house four million ants. At any one point in time there are currently thought to be very roughly ten million trillion individual insects alive on Earth (Ethel got a bit carried away in ‘The Insects’ World’). Whatever way you look at it, we are seriously outnumbered. Some pest insects, such as aphids and house flies, are perhaps more common than ever because of the food we unwittingly supply for them. But most insects are declining, and many thousands of species have already gone extinct. As the most famous entomologist alive today, E.O. Wilson, once said, ‘If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.’ Insects are vanishing. By every indicator we have, the bulk of insects are declining. Butterflies, bees, dragonflies, grasshoppers and the countless species that live only in the dwindling rainforests are disappearing one by one.
    In the minds of many, conservation is all about giant pandas, ospreys, tigers, rhinos and blue whales: large, charismatic, furry or feathery creatures, often living on the other side of the world, glimpsed only in television documentaries. What few people appreciate is that the vast majority of life on Earth, in terms of both numbers of species and numbers of individuals, is made up of insects and other arthropods, and that many of them are just as important, fascinating and worthy of our interest and of conservation as the larger creatures. Indeed, whilst the extinction of the giant panda would be terribly sad, it would not have any knock-on consequences. There would perhaps be a tiny bit more bamboo in a forest in China. In contrast, the little creatures that live all around us are absolutely vital to our survival and well-being, yet we generally pay them little heed unless they annoy us.
    The various flowers in my meadow need bees, hoverflies, butterflies and beetles to pollinate them, and many of those same insects fly out of the meadow to pollinate the sunflowers in the neighbouring fields and the peaches, apples and tomatoes in my small garden by the house. The wild flowers and my vegetables also need a healthy soil in which to grow, and so depend upon the springtails, woodlice, worms and millipedes that live in it, recycling nutrients and aerating the soil. Without predators such as ladybirds, lacewings and rove beetles, and