20 March 23 Nature #02 Nature #02 - Insects

THE SMALL THINGS COUNT MORE THAN THE EYE BEHOLDS

The small things count, and we count on them (see short essay by Einhorn under “Background,” below) – insects make a perfect example.

While walking down one of the snowy trails in the Forest where we live, I saw the thinnest, most delicate spider I had ever seen making her way over each snowflake crystal – impossible to believe – too small to survive but she was already surviving – a winter spider emerged too soon, anticipating tender fern and  awakening beneath snowbanks.

So small.

So alive.

Beneath our conscious seeing.

Above our sensory range.

The small things of our shared planet. This one with eight legs thinner than a filament of thread.

I have an urge to assist him, but I don’t know where he is going.

What is there to say about an encounter like this?

The meeting was about the great matters of life and death.

We are not the only life forms that deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Along with happiness goes – as much as possible – freedom from suffering, knowing that suffering is also the nature of existence. So much more to be said on this point. It seems we don’t have much trouble applying these characteristics to ourselves and to the “glamorous” creatures – the wolves, bears, eagles, and the like. What is often forgotten is the web of life wherein all beings play their part and working together produce what Buddhism calls “interdependent co-arising.”

Today, we will forego the usual “Explorations” that typically appear at the end of each post. In their place is a short, focused essay located under “Background.” The essay speaks directly about the key role that insects play in the web-ring of all life, as do we all.  

Today:

. . . All short poems expressing death and beauty in same poem, even when not obvious at first. The focus is insects as you may have guessed from my opening remarks. Each of our poems has something to say about insects and arachnids. Not all “bugs” are equal. BUT, if you read nothing else in this post, please consider having a look at the first two poems below by Matsuo Basho, followed by Sara Teasdale: “There Will Come Soft Rains.”

The cry of the cicada

The cry of the cicada

Gives us no sign

That presently it will die. 

 Matsuo Basho                                              —Translation by William George Aston

There Will Come Soft Rains

Sara Teasdale 

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Teasdale’s work has been characterized by its simplicity and clarity, her use of classical forms, and her passionate and romantic subject matter. Her later books trace her growing finesse and poetic subtlety. She divorced in 1929 and lived the rest of her life as a semi-invalid. Weakened after a difficult bout with pneumonia, Teasdale died by suicide on January 29, 1933. Her final collection, Strange Victory (Macmillan) appeared posthumously that same year.

Cobwebs

by Emily Dickinson

The spider as an artist

Has never been employed

Though his surpassing merit

Is freely certified

By every broom and Bridget

Throughout a Christian land.

Neglected son of genius,

I take thee by the hand.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

by Anonymous

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.

Down came the rain

and washed the spider out.

Out came the sun

and dried up all the rain

and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

by Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

The Honey-Bee

by John B. Tabb

O bee, good-by!

Your weapon's gone,

And you anon

Are doomed to die;

But Death to you can bring

No second sting.

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

by John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:

That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead

In summer luxury,—he has never done

With his delights, for when tired out with fun,

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost,

The Grasshopper's among the grassy hills.

The Dragonfly

by Arthur Christopher Benson

Restless dragonfly, darting, dancing

Over the ribbons of trailing weed,

Cease awhile from thy myriad glancing,

Poised on the curve of the swinging reed . . .

Background:

By Catrin Einhorn – New York Times – Climate and Environment 

March 7, 2023

Hello! I’m Catrin. I cover biodiversity for the Climate and Environment team here at The Times. Sometimes people forget that latter part of our name, with so much focus these days on climate change. But we cover all kinds of environmental issues. Plus, the climate and biodiversity crises are deeply linked, and scientists say they must be addressed together.

The people behind Climate Forward invited me to make a guest appearance today to offer a new take on one of my recent articles, which looked at why some states can’t protect insects.

That lack of authority is a problem for at least two reasons: First, many insect species show alarming declines. Second, the rest of terrestrial life on this planet, including humans, relies on insects. Creatures like bees, butterflies and beetles pollinate plants, enrich soil, and provide a critical source of protein for other species up the food chain.

Still, when it comes to insect conservation, at least a dozen states have their hands tied, legally speaking. The article I wrote focused on that.

But it’s not just insects and other creepy-crawlies, like spiders and centipedes, that get left out. In some states, authority over plants (not to mention fungi) is murky or nonexistent, according to Mark Humpert, director of conservation initiatives at the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

Why it matters

Plants make the rest of us possible. In the words of Doug Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware, they “allow us, and nearly every other species, to eat sunlight, by creating the nourishment that drives food webs on this planet.”

They let us eat sunlight!

Also, since plants and insects often have highly specialized relationships, the extinction of a certain plant species can create a cascade of other extinctions.

Which leads to another important idea: The approach to conservation that has brought back charismatic megafauna like elk and bald eagles doesn’t always work so well for the multitude of species closer to the bottom of the food web.

“The single species, one-at-a-time approach doesn’t make sense for insects because there’s so many of them,” Matt Forister, an insect ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, told me.

A shift has started, state wildlife workers said, but there’s a long way to go. And they noted that a lack of attention to insects and plants can even end up undermining efforts to protect animals higher up the food chain.

Take the greater sage grouse, an at-risk bird that lives in the sagebrush steppe of the West. After wildfires, restoration efforts involve planting lots of sagebrush, which the birds need to nest in and eat. But for the first several weeks of their lives, sagebrush chicks require high-protein insects. To attract a diversity of insects, you need a diversity of native plants. Planting sagebrush monocultures doesn’t cut it.

“We need to understand the needs of all the species that are a part of the system, that are all contributing to each other,” said Ross Winton, an invertebrate biologist at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “Instead of managing for the species at the top of food chain, we need to understand the relationships between them.”

What you can do

Greater sage grouse aren’t the only bug-loving baby birds. Dr. Tallamy has estimated that about 96 percent of North American terrestrial birds rear their chicks in part or exclusively on insects. So, he and others are behind a growing movement to support ecosystems by encouraging people across the country (and beyond) to plant native flowers, grasses, shrubs and trees. It’s a way to support the things at the bottom of the food web, one yard or rooftop garden at a time.

NOTE – CAUTION: The “handy tool” link in this paragraph takes you off the browser you are using; however, the Word doc will still be there. Don’t panic if you decide to access it. Need a place to start? The National Wildlife Federation has worked with Dr. Tallamy on a handy tool. If you’re looking to help the bugs that help us, planting food for them is a great start.