Insects underpin the systems that sustain life, yet they are little understood and often overlooked. As concerns grow about their decline, researchers and citizen scientists alike are working to document and protect insect biodiversity to ensure that these small but essential species are not lost forever.
Many Australians carry memories of summers that seemed louder and more alive. Crickets called from the garden. Christmas beetles clustered around verandah lights. Bees pollinated our flowers. Butterflies fluttered through our field of vision.
For lots of us, those encounters seem rarer now. Associate Professor Tanya Latty understands why that observation resonates, but as an entomologist she is circumspect about what can be proven.
“For most species, the science doesn’t tell us much, because nobody was keeping track,” she explains. “We just don’t have those long-term records. I think a lot of it is because we took our insects for granted.”
This is certainly the case for Christmas beetles, which are among Australia’s most beloved insects. People remember seeing them in droves, and old newspaper articles describe them as being in abundance. But without accurate long-term records, scientists are left trying to piece together what has changed, when and why.
Insects are everywhere, until suddenly they are not. They are easily overlooked and rarely granted the same public affection as koalas or platypuses – yet they are fundamental to the systems that sustain life.
“Insects are holding our ecosystems together,” Tanya says.
They pollinate our crops and our native plants, they recycle nutrients, break down waste, control agricultural pests and provide food for countless other animals, including us. Without them, many crops would bear less fruit or none at all. Even the unglamorous work of flies and dung beetles is essential, as they help to break down waste and return nutrients to the soil.
Even our favourite sweet treats rely on insects, Tanya points out. Without the tiny flies that pollinate cacao flowers, chocolate as we know it would not exist.
“It’s almost impossible to overstate how important insects are,” she says.
The connections that rely on insects and invertebrates can be almost invisible. In the grasslands around Canberra, the critically endangered Canberra Grassland Earless Dragon depends on burrows made by wolf spiders for shelter, temperature regulation and egg protection. Yet, Tanya says, the spiders that make those burrows have received far less attention than the more obviously charismatic lizard.
It’s a reminder that ecosystems are not only built from the animals we notice – and that missing awareness has consequences. After the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20, Tanya and her colleagues found that almost 700 invertebrate species had more than half of their known range burned. Around 300 had their entire known range burned, meaning that all recorded habitat for those species was affected by fire. For insects and other invertebrates that may exist only in small pockets of habitat, such an event can bring them much closer to extinction. While the attention given to more than 60,000 koalas affected by the fires was much warranted, Tanya says, a vast invertebrate crisis was also unfolding in the background with far less awareness.
Photo: Dr Aola Richards with Giant Weta, New Zealand, by Steve Rumsey. Te Papa (E.006714)
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LinkThis is why the Sydney Insect Hub, established this year through a $12.6 million gift from pioneering entomologist Professor Aola Richards, is so significant. It is an investment in knowledge before it disappears.
Professor Richards was, by any measure, a trailblazer. She was the first woman in New Zealand to receive a PhD in biology and went on to spend 33 years in the Biology Department at the University of New South Wales where she published more than 80 papers. Her fieldwork was fearless and exacting – she spent weeks in caves studying the strange, little-known insects that lived there – at a time when few women were encouraged to pursue such an adventurous scientific career. Her work has been crucial to our understanding of Australasian cave crickets, wētā (a giant cricket-like insect found in New Zealand) and ladybirds. “She really set up the future of entomology,” Tanya says.
Professor Richards’ gift is supporting the long-term work that insect science requires, by building the pipeline of researchers needed to understand and protect species. It is helping to train the next generation of entomologists, supporting higher-degree by research (HDR) students and postdoctoral researchers, and giving early-career scientists the time, mentorship and resources they need to build deep expertise. Through scholarships, fellowships, grants, writing support, shared research platforms and partnerships with museums, government and industry, the Sydney Insect Hub is helping researchers to document species before they disappear and to produce the data needed for critical conservation and biosecurity decisions.
Tanya says that in Australia we may have identified only around 30 percent of our insect species. Taxonomists – scientists who identify and describe species – are retiring faster than they are being replaced, and this matters because if a species has not been identified, it is almost impossible to conserve it.
For early-career researcher entomologist Dr Braxton Jones (PhD ’25), taxonomy is the beginning of conservation. “If you don’t know what a species is, you can never do any conservation on it,” he says.
Braxton has been fascinated by stick insects since as a child he brought some home from Canberra’s CSIRO Discovery Centre. As an order of insects, they’re most famous for their camouflage. Braxton remembers dropping one in the wild and then being unable to locate it, despite knowing exactly where it had landed. “I knew it was there,” he says. “but I just never found it again.”
Remarkably, today Braxton keeps descendants of that original family of stick insects that he brought home as a child.
His career has followed that childhood care and fascination into taxonomy, evolution and conservation. The Aola Richards grant is now helping to support Braxton’s fellowship, and he sees something deeply moving in the way Professor Richards’ work is continuing through the researchers she supports.
“She’s still doing research, but through me,” he says. “Because of her, I got this grant. So, all these new stick insects we’re finding more about – she’s got some part in it.”
The Sydney Insect Hub will also empower everyday Australians to help build the knowledge needed to protect our insects. Citizen science projects allow people to contribute photographs and observations of local insect populations through platforms such as iNaturalist.
When the Christmas Beetle Count – a collaboration between Tanya and Invertebrates Australia – began, Tanya says, there were fewer than 2000 Christmas beetle observations recorded. Thanks to citizen scientists that number has now grown to about 25,000. Nine species that had not been seen in decades have been rediscovered through public observations, and one recent submission may even be a new species.
For Braxton, citizen science projects extend the reach of researchers like him. People in regional and remote places may see insects at times and locations that scientists would otherwise miss.
“It’s definitely not something I could do on my own,” he says.
Participation can begin close to home. It might involve joining a project such as Bug Hunt or Bugs in Your Backyard Week (16–22 November) and photographing the insects you find in your garden. Or it might involve boosting the bug-friendliness of your garden to give insects a safe habitat to thrive in.
Tanya’s key advice on that front is to plant flowers – lots of them. Native flowers are especially valuable, she says, but she also encourages people to pay attention to what is already attracting insects in their area. And she recommends avoiding insecticides where possible.
Tanya is realistic about the scale of the challenge ahead. Some species will be lost, she says, but insects can also respond quickly when conditions improve. Plant the right flowers and pollinators will arrive. Reduce insecticides, and gardens can become habitats. Build better data and researchers can detect problems earlier.
“I’m hopeful because I think that we already know in some cases what we need to do,” she says. “We just need to do it.”
The future of insects is a question not just for scientists but for us all. The planet may feel like a human world, but look closely, and you’ll find it is an insect world too. Our future depends on learning to see it that way.
The power of citizen science: How you can help
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Photograph insects in your garden, street, park or bushwalk and upload them to iNaturalist.
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Record common species as well as unusual ones.
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Join seasonal projects such as the Christmas Beetle Count, Bug Hunt or Bugs in Your Backyard Week.
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Plant insect-friendly flowers, especially native plants.
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Avoid broad-spectrum insecticides. A caterpillar today may become a butterfly later.
Feature image: Dr Braxton Jones and Professor Tanya Latty stand together in a community garden.
Credit Stefanie Zingsheim, University of Sydney.