Year of the Beetle

Beetles, the Most Important Organisms on Earth?

Spring is barely here and yet the evidence of warmer days ahead are all around us.

Take, for instance, the humble beetle. Chances are, you’ve seen a beetle or two today. If not today, you likely saw one yesterday and you’ll surely see one tomorrow. Finding yourself in the presence of beetles is more likely than not, even during the dead of winter. With so many different kinds, there’s a beetle for every season and environment you can think of, no matter how small or obscure.

In his 2018 article in “The Guardian” newspaper, entomologist Richard Jones argued beetles are without question the most important organisms on the planet, and it’s not even close. There have been around 500,000 different types of beetles around the world described by science, but the true number of species is suspected to be more like 12 million.

Among this crowded field of bugs, beetles have adapted to eat everything that is organic; from decaying leaves, to flower pollen, to animal dung, to rotting flesh. Heck, there’s even a beetle (Platypsyllus castoris) that lives under the waterproof fur of beavers and subsists on eating flakes of dead skin shed by its host.

The smallest insect on Earth is a beetle called the Colombian featherwing. It measures 0.325 mm, smaller than many single-celled organisms. The largest beetle is the aptly named titan beetle of Brazil. It is more than 500X the size of the featherwing – an astounding 167 mm, more than 6-and-1/2- inches.

With so many varieties occupying so many ecological niches, it’s worth considering Jones’ claim that beetles are the most important biological force on the planet. They are a source of food for millions of insectivorous animals. They act as agents of pollination for plants and trees, including some that are vitalto humans. They remove waste from the environment by eating dead plant and animal material. Beetles also eat agricultural pests. Ladybugs are famous for their insatiable appetite for aphids and firefly larvae eat snails and slugs. A study in the United Kingdom showed that where ground beetles are present, they can significantly increase agricultural production thanks to their consumption of grassy weed seeds.

Beetles are everywhere. Some can be considered pests to humans, others bring great benefits to our society. Certainly, all beetles are important to the complex web of life stretching around the globe.