Insect biodiversity accounts for a large proportion of all biodiversity

Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...

 on the planet, with over 1,000,000 insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

 species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 described.

Agriculture

In agricultural

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

 ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

s, biodiversity is instrumentally important not only for the production of food, but for other ecological services as well, including the recycling of nutrient

Nutrient

A nutrient is a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow or a substance used in an organism's metabolism which must be taken in from its environment. They are used to build and repair tissues, regulate body processes and are converted to and used as energy...

s, regulation of microclimate

Microclimate

A microclimate is a local atmospheric zone where the climate differs from the surrounding area. The term may refer to areas as small as a few square feet or as large as many square miles...

 and local hydrological processes, suppression of undesirable organisms and detoxification of noxious chemicals.

In the United States alone, pollination

Pollination

Pollination is the process by which pollen is transferred in plants, thereby enabling fertilisation and sexual reproduction. Pollen grains transport the male gametes to where the female gamete are contained within the carpel; in gymnosperms the pollen is directly applied to the ovule itself...

 by bees accounts for over US$

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

9 billion of economic revenue . According to some estimates, over ⅓ of the human diet can be traced directly or indirectly to bee pollination . Losses of key pollinators have been reported in at least one region or country on every continent except Antarctica, which has no pollinators. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment  concluded that with the global decline in the amount of pollinators, there is not a complete loss of fruit or seeds, but a significant decrease in quantity and viability in fruits, and a lower number of seeds.

Food

Over 1000 species of insects are, or have been used as food somewhere in the world. Entomophagy

Entomophagy

Entomophagy is the consumption of insects as food. Insects are eaten by many animals, but the term is generally used to refer to human consumption of insects; animals that eat insects are known as insectivores...

 is common in central

Central Africa

Central Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....

 and southern Africa

Southern Africa

Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. Within the region are numerous territories, including the Republic of South Africa ; nowadays, the simpler term South Africa is generally reserved for the country in English.-UN...

, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, and Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

. Termite

Termite

Termites are a group of eusocial insects that, until recently, were classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera , but are now accepted as the epifamily Termitoidae, of the cockroach order Blattodea...

s, cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

s, grasshopper

Grasshopper

The grasshopper is an insect of the suborder Caelifera in the order Orthoptera. To distinguish it from bush crickets or katydids, it is sometimes referred to as the short-horned grasshopper...

s, locust

Locust

Locusts are the swarming phase of short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae. These are species that can breed rapidly under suitable conditions and subsequently become gregarious and migratory...

s, beetle

Beetle

Coleoptera is an order of insects commonly called beetles. The word "coleoptera" is from the Greek , koleos, "sheath"; and , pteron, "wing", thus "sheathed wing". Coleoptera contains more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known life-forms...

s, ant

Ant

Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...

s, bee brood, and moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 larva

Larva

A larva is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle...

e are examples of insects that are used as food sources. Insects are high in protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

, energy

Energy

In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...

, and a number of mineral

Mineral

A mineral is a naturally occurring solid chemical substance formed through biogeochemical processes, having characteristic chemical composition, highly ordered atomic structure, and specific physical properties. By comparison, a rock is an aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids and does not...

s and vitamin

Vitamin

A vitamin is an organic compound required as a nutrient in tiny amounts by an organism. In other words, an organic chemical compound is called a vitamin when it cannot be synthesized in sufficient quantities by an organism, and must be obtained from the diet. Thus, the term is conditional both on...

s and can form up to 5-10% of the annual animal protein consumption of certain indigenous groups . Many insects are said to have a nutty flavour, along with a high nutritional content.

Human culture

Early human civilisations held insects as an important element within their cultures. Most famously, scarab beetle

Scarab beetle

Scarab beetle may refer to these species: * A beetle of the family Scarabaeidae* Scarabaeus sacer, the dung beetle species worshipped by the ancient Egyptians as an embodiment of the god Khepri...

s were central religious artifacts within Egyptian culture. Insect symbolism, such as the dung beetle

Dung beetle

Dung beetles are beetles that feed partly or exclusively on feces. All of these species belong to the superfamily Scarabaeoidea; most of them to the subfamilies Scarabaeinae and Aphodiinae of the family Scarabaeidae. This beetle can also be referred to as the scarab beetle. As most species of...

 portrayed as a potter

Pottery

Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery also refers to the art or craft of the potter or the manufacture of pottery...

, is seen in the East as well. The Chinese

Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

 viewed cicada

Cicada

A cicada is an insect of the order Hemiptera, suborder Auchenorrhyncha , in the superfamily Cicadoidea, with large eyes wide apart on the head and usually transparent, well-veined wings. There are about 2,500 species of cicada around the world, and many of them remain unclassified...

s as a symbol of birth or immortality, the San of the Kalahari believe that the praying mantis represents creation and patience, and the Greeks also created beautiful representations of scarab beetles using colourful stones.

The scope

Over 1 million species of insects have been described, but current estimates of total insect diversity vary from 5-80 million species of insect. Beetles (Coleoptera) make up 40% of described insect species, but some entomologists suggest that flies

Fly

True flies are insects of the order Diptera . They possess a pair of wings on the mesothorax and a pair of halteres, derived from the hind wings, on the metathorax...

 (Diptera) and Hymenoptera (wasp

Wasp

The term wasp is typically defined as any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor an ant. Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that preys upon it or parasitizes it, making wasps critically important in natural control of their...

s, bee

Bee

Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila...

s and ant

Ant

Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...

s) could be as diverse or more so. Five orders of insects stand out in their levels of species richness: Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...

, and the Hemiptera

Hemiptera

Hemiptera is an order of insects most often known as the true bugs , comprising around 50,000–80,000 species of cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, shield bugs, and others...

.

Conservation

There are two approaches to the conservation of insects. Either humans set aside large portions of land using "wilderness preservation" as the motive, or confronting the particular processes that affect the charismatic vertebrates in order to achieve indirect conservation of insects. With biodiversity loss being a global problem, conserving habitat simply for species of insects is of low priority in the current environmental culture.

Single-species conservation is said to preserve many other species indirectly, this preservation by default is referred to as the umbrella effect

Umbrella effect

An umbrella effect is the protection extended by the presence of an umbrella species to other species in the same habitat. The umbrella species is often either a flagship species whose conservation benefits other species or a keystone species which may be targeted for conservation due to its...

. "Charismatic species", such as butterflies or large, colourful beetles, called flagship species

Flagship species

The concept of flagship species is a surrogate species concept with its genesis in the field of conservation biology. The flagship species concept holds that by raising the profile of a particular species, it can successfully leverage more support for biodiversity conservation at large in a...

, can expand public awareness and financial contributions for conservation efforts.

Migratory species, such as the well-known monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), are in need of special conservation methods. One species may require several habitat locations for different periods in their migratory patterns.

Insect conservation has been labeled in the past as a concern only for the affluent. The developing country of Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

 has a "happily ever after" ending in their attempts to preserve the world's largest butterfly, Queen Alexandra's Birdwing

Queen Alexandra's Birdwing

Queen Alexandra's Birdwing is the largest butterfly in the world.The species was named by Lord Walter Rothschild in 1907, in honour of Queen Alexandra, wife of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom...

(Ornithoptera alexandrae). This species is restricted to a very small range of habitat due to specificity in their diet. In the international market of insect collecting, the butterfly can retrieve up to US$2000. In 1978, the government of Papua New Guinea set up the Insect Farming and Trading Agency (IFTA) to regulate the exploitation and conservation of Queen Alexandra's Birdwing and other valuable butterflies.