Quote of the Day
Medical entomologists and pest controllers must deal with arthropods that are harmful to humans, so it is sometimes easy to forget that the majority of arthropod species are beneficial.
So important are insects and other land-dwelling arthropods that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months. Most of the amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals would crash to extinction about the same time. Next would go the bulk of the flowering plants and with them the physical structure of most forests and other terrestrial habitats of the world. The land surface would literally rot.
This quote is from E. O. Wilson’s book, The Diversity of Life (1992).
