1Frame4Nature | Insects Color Our World
What YOU Can Do:
- Plant or place plants with flowers in your garden, backyard or balcony, for food for insects, even in the cities.
- Avoid the use of pesticides to kill insects; this harms not only the insects, but all the animals that feed on them.
- Abstain from collecting insects, they are delicate and we can damage them.
- Try to buy organic vegetables, free of chemicals or pesticides.
- Take care when you hike in nature to avoid stepping unnecessarily on plants or flowers that insects feed on.
–1Frame4Nature is a collection of images and stories from around the globe of your personal connection to nature. However small, when combined with the actions of others, your individual actions can impact real and tangible outcomes for the preservation of our planet. Submit your story now!
iLCP Emerging League Photographer Javier Aznar‘s 1Frame4Nature: Insects Color Our World
When I was a child, I found that insects were like marvelous animals full of colors and shapes. While studying and learning about them, I also discovered that they had really interesting behaviors.
Now as an iLCP Emerging League Photographer and biologist, I have been photographing insects for the last decade, showing how amazing they are, and highlighting what we could lose if we don’t make a change.
Populations of insects are decreasing in alarming numbers. Bees are dying by the millions. Can you imagine fields without the light of fireflies during the summer or the concert of crickets singing in the evening? A future without insects would mean a dim and eerily silent natural world.
Pollution, habitat destruction, chemicals, fertilizers, insecticides, and the collecting of insects among other causes, limit the populations of these small fragile animals.
We usually tend to protect the bigger, more charismatic animals, but we don’t usually do the same with the smaller, less noticeable ones, like the insects or other arthropods. This is a major mistake because we must see the global situation, not only the species. Without insects, some big animals will not have food to eat. The world works like a whole complex, and we need to restore it at all levels for a healthy balance in nature.
Each year hundreds of species become extinct all over the world because of the habitat lost, even new species that we don’t know exist yet. The insects are under considerable human pressure, and we must do something to alleviate the stress. They need our help, and we need insects in our world.
Insects are vital for the ecosystem. They pollinate the flowers and are prey for thousands of species of other animals, like birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. They contribute in several ways to the health of ecosystems, and we should give them the importance and respect they deserve.
We see a cockroach and instantly we think that it must be killed, thinking that they are a pest, when only a few insects are pests among hundreds of species that are not. Even those that are more disliked, like mosquitoes, cockroaches, or other arthropods like spiders, are important to habitat health, like contributing to forests by decomposing organic matter.
All the insects are important for ecosystems to thrive, and they add vibrant colors and display interesting behaviors that spark our curiosity in the natural world, giving the Earth character that we should never allow to be lost.
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