From silk moths to fruit flies, these five insects changed the world

If you were asked to select five insects that have most profoundly altered humanity since Homo sapiens created the first tools and controlled fire, which insects would you choose?

With 1.1 million described species and ten quintillion individual insects jumping, buzzing, burrowing and swimming, this may seem like a daunting exercise. Your first impulse to choose insects known to transmit disease or otherwise cause us harm? The rat flea started the Black Death that reduced the world’s population by a third. Mosquito-borne malaria kills well over half a million people a year and has altered the trajectory of wars and the construction of vital infrastructure such as the Panama Canal. The louse, as a vector of epidemic typhus, helped ruin Napoleon’s march on Moscow. There are crop destroyers, kitchen invaders and insects that defend themselves with a nasty sting.

While the insect species implicated in these unfortunate human interactions should not be dismissed, in the grand scheme of biodiversity, they represent small branches on the insect tree of life that pale in comparison to the remaining bastion of hexapod wonders that positively impact our lives. , through ecosystem services (such as pollination and decomposition) or in the formation of our cultures.

Insects affect how we dress, what we eat, where we travel and how we perceive the world. Insects are the subject of endless acts of biomimicry, inspiring engineers and architects, fashion designers and artists. Whether you choose to acknowledge or embrace insects, or recoil from their presence, they are your neighbors and intimate companions, and their presence permeates your life in profound and positive ways. Insects outnumber, outnumber and precede us. They fill countless niches, feed others, and perform feats of wonder and beauty. Without insects, not only would we lose overt and hidden facets that enrich our cultures, but the fabric of the natural world would unravel, leaving our cultural heritage – and ourselves – a mere footnote in Earth’s history.

Let us consider five insect allies.

Domestic silk moth (Bombyx mori)

Legend tells us that Chinese Empress Leizu founded the cultivation of silk from caterpillars more than 5,000 years ago, after a silkworm moth cocoon dipped into her cup of steaming tea, crumbling into a mess. single shiny fiber. Silk was so valuable that it was a staple of the Silk Road, an ancient network of trade routes that transformed the economies of nations, spreading innovations, languages, religion, and material goods across vast swathes of the world. Under penalty of death or exile, sericulture (the practice of cultivating silkworms to produce silk) was kept a state secret in China until the insects were smuggled out and a change of powers ensued. Japan would not have become a rising economic and military power without its silk exports. Silk is valued for its biocompatibility, high tensile strength, elasticity, lightness and breathability, and for its sensual, smooth and shiny texture. Such attributes have attracted engineers who want to develop synthetic imitations to advance tissue engineering, drug delivery systems, surgical sutures, biodegradable packaging and biosensors. Silk permeates art museums and the fashion industry. It has held our fascination and inspired our greed for so long that our domestication of silkworm moths has left them completely dependent on us. Starting with a cocoon in a cup of tea, Bombyx mori It’s a moth that can no longer fly.

Western bee (Apis mellifera)

At a site now known as Barranco Gómez in eastern Spain, an artist depicted a sophisticated robbery using ocher on a cave wall. The scene is set 7,500 years ago and shows an individual climbing a rope ladder tied in loops precariously resting on the face of a cliff. The thief steals two of the most valuable commodities of his time: wax and honey.

A bee secretes wax from its abdomen and chews it into the architectural marvel that is its lightweight yet durable honeycomb, and it converts flower nectar into energy-rich honey. For humans, the entire comb is an abundance of sustenance and utility. Beeswax has been made into candles, cosmetics, coatings to prevent food spoilage, medicines and adhesives, and has been used as the main medium for encaustic painting. Some of the world’s greatest works of art have been forged from beeswax in the lost wax process. Honey transcends its sweetness and has healed wounds and preserved bodies. Stealing bee nests and supplementing our diets with their energy-rich contents may have given our ancestors an advantage that allowed us to move from bee stealing to beekeeping.

Cochineal (Dactylopius coccus)

The source of the perfect red was carefully cultivated for millennia by the Aztecs and Mayans, until Spanish conquistadors exported the pigment by the ton to Europe. Transatlantic recipients were dazzled by its rich, evocative hue. Was it created by a worm, a berry, a worm berry? It would remain a mystery for a long time until French botanist Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville tricked authorities by stealing plants containing the treasure from Mexico. His adventure-filled obsession culminated in the theft of the organism responsible for turning the world’s source red. Historically used to adorn European aristocracy and nobility, Catholic clergy, and British “redcoats,” scarlet dye is produced by a true insect—an insect with a piercing, sucking beak from nymph to adulthood. The cochineal insect, today used to color foods, drinks and cosmetics, is an organic response to the hue most associated with danger, temperament, sexuality and love.

Lac Insect (Kerria lacca)

How many apples and sweets have you eaten, how many floors have you walked on, furniture you’ve shared a room with, or works of art you’ve admired that are coated with a protective, shiny layer of insect secretions? Scale insects exude a waxy, white protective fuzz over their bodies, but lacquer bugs produce a hard casing under which they can safely feed on a plant’s fluids. That is, until enterprising humans collect sticks containing lacquer, process them into flakes and then into fluid. Shellac has historically been used to coat the surface of almost everything around you, including yourself (hair lacquer, nail and shoe polish, clothing dye). The only commercial resin of animal origin, shellac is another example of an insect product that may be ubiquitous but of which we are unaware. If these insect secretions escape our awareness, what other insect products are hiding in plain sight?

I tilted our sample toward those exploited for their products: caterpillar thread, honey and wax, the perfect red and shellac. Let’s close with a little insect that has taught us more about ourselves than any other organism on the planet.

Common fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster)

Taking off from New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Field in 1946, it was the first animal to experience the unprecedented dangers of space travel. Who was this heroic (unwitting) astronaut? It’s not a monkey or a dog, and it’s certainly not a human. Fruit flies—those ever-present insects that hover around the fruit in your kitchen—became our irradiated space-traveling ancestors. In addition to serving as guinea pigs and leaders in space, fruit flies have become the ideal model organism for studying and navigating genetics. We share about 60% of our DNA with these flies, offering insights into disease prevention and the mechanics of evolution. Understanding the heritability model of a fly and how its brains are connected (all 139,255 neurons and their 54.5 million synapses) is a path to better understanding the natural world, including ourselves. Changes are underway and insects are providing a map for our possible futures.