Something about Insects from my APES class

Insects have a bad reputation. We classify many insect species as pests because they compete with us for food, spread human disease, and invade our lawns, gardens, and houses. Some people have "bugitis," fear all of insects, and think that the only good bug is a dead bug. However, this view fails to recognize the vital roles insects play in helping sustain life on Earth.
A large proportion of the earth's plant species depend on insects to pollinate their flowers. Plants also benefit when insects help loosen the soil around their roots and decompose dead tissue into nutrients the plants need. In turn, we and other land-dwelling animals depend on plants for food, either by eating them or by consuming animals that eat them. If there were no pollinating insects, there would be very few fruits and vegetables for us and plant-eating animals to eat.
Suppose all insects disappear today. Within a year most of the earth's amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals would become extinct because of the disappearance of so much plant life. The earth would be covered with rotting vegetation and animal carcasses being decomposed by unimaginably huge hordes of bacteria and fungi. The land, largely devoid of animal life, would be covered by mats of wind-pollinated vegetation and intermittent clumps of small trees and bushes.
Fortunately, this is not a realistic scenario because insects, which have been around for at least 400 millions years, are phenomenally successful forms of life. There were the first animals to invade the land, and later, the air. Today they are by far, the planet's most diverse, abundant, and successful group of animals. Scientists have identified about 950,000 insect species but some researchers believe that up to a 100 million unidentified insect species exist.
Some people have wondered whether insects will take over the world if human race extinguishes itself. This is the wrong question. Insects are already in charge. The approximately billion billion insects alive at any given time have already dominated much of the earth's land surface for millions of years, and they're likely to be here for millions of years more. Insects can thrive without newcomers such as us, but we and most other land organisms would quickly perish without them.



Interesting huh?