Ask the Expert: Conservationist Matthew Shepherd on Protecting Beneficial Insects
I’ve always been fascinated by insects. It wasn’t until later that I learned the essential role insects play in the planetary ecosystem as pollinators and distributors of seeds.
Q: What are “beneficial insects”?
A: The term beneficial insects is used describe a particular group of insects that is somehow useful to us.
But there are so many other insects that we’re not noticing that bring benefits to us, like those that decompose vegetation (like getting rid of leaves) or dispose of dead animals and all that kind of stuff.
Photograph by Sara Morris, courtesy of Xerces Society.
Lady Beetles are great beneficial insects.
Xerces’s Habitat Planning for Beneficial Insects: Guidelines for Conservation Biological Control is written for farmers, but has a ton of information about using beneficial insects for pest control (conservation biocontrol) as well as illustrated profiles of many species that people will encounter in their garden.
Photograph by Sara Morris, courtesy of Xerces Society.
A green lacewing stops on an echinacea petal. These delicate-looking insects are also fierce predators of soft-bodied insects like aphids.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, one in three assessed North American fireflies may be at risk of extinction. [To learn more about firefly conservation, click here]
Photograph by Katie Lamke, courtesy of Xerces Society.
Photograph by Sarah Foltz Jordan, courtesy of Xerces Society.
Paper wasps can be mistaken for yellowjackets, but they are not aggressive. These herbivore predators often feed their young caterpillars.
The western monarch in California during its migration south. Take the time and the courage to ask your nursery about what their plants have been treated with.
Photograph by Candace Fallon, courtesy of Xerces Society.
Xerces has been building an effort that we’re calling Bee-safe Nursery plants, to encourage people to let their nurseries know that they want pesticide-free plants.
Larva of green lacewing on a lobelia flower looks like a crocodile. There are also studies about native bees with similar results: the more native plants you grow, the more diversity and abundance of native bees. But you can also grow other varieties alongside the natives.
Photograph by Sara Morris, courtesy of Xerces Society.
I also have purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans, which are not native to where I live in Oregon.
Photograph by Candace Fallon, courtesy of Xerces Society.
Monarch caterpillars need native milkweed to survive. Take milkweed and monarch butterflies, for example. If we plant the right type of milkweeds and nectar plants, we’ll be supporting the entire life cycle of the monarch. What we do in our gardens can really have an impact.
A: Scientists had thought that the Fender’s Blue butterfly, from Oregon’s Willamette Valley, had gone extinct in the 1930s.
Q: Any success stories on an insect rebounding?
Then the next year, an entomologist from Oregon State University found some and identified them as Fender’s blue, a tiny blue butterfly that’s about an inch across, whose habitat is prairie grasslands, which has now mostly been converted to agriculture and development.
Fender’s Blue butterfly, once thought to be extinct, was rediscovered nearly 30 years ago by a 12-year old child. Today, the Fender’s Blue is no longer officially endangered, but has been upgraded to threatened.
Photograph by Candace Fallon, courtesy of Xerces Society.
It helps both conservation organizations and scientists because we can’t be in all the right places all the time to collect observations. The reason why we know which plants are good for the rusty patched bee, for example, is because of observations from the community.
Q: Why is community science important?