Insect Apocalypse

Entomologist Doug Tallamy argues that we can't afford to lose biodiversity.

“It is plants that generate oxygen and clean water,” he wrote on his website, Homegrown National Park. “It is insect decomposers that drive the nutrient cycles on earth, allowing each new generation of plants and animals to exist. It is pollinators that are essential to the continued existence of 80% of all plants and 90% of all flowering plants, and it is birds and mammals that disperse the seeds of those plants and provide them with pest control services.”

Homegrown National Park is a project he started that empowers individuals to take action, to plant native plants in their yards that are desirable for pollinators. And if enough people do that close enough to each other, that creates a pollinator pathway.

Tallamy came to speak in Granville in December, 2022. His visit inspired the creation of the Licking County Pollinator Pathway. Susan King is the coordinator.

In spring of 2025, the group launched a program called Meadows for Monarchs aimed at providing pollinator habitat by converting ordinary grasses into a space for native plants. 

“The idea is that you create these little micro habitats all over the county, including at parks, including at Denison University, including at Otterbein SeniorLife,” King said.

King encourages homeowners to participate in this project. They may have a few pots of native plants on their porch, a full yard of native plants or anything in between. But she also wants to persuade more park and recreation districts to take part. 

“It’s also really cost effective. There are lots of areas of publicly owned land that are mowed every week. You convert some of that into pollinator habitat, into these little meadows, you’re only having to mow it once a year.”

She acknowledges, however, that seed mixes are expensive and there is time and effort involved in killing the grass to make way for the native plants.

These days, McCormac is researching moths in preparation for a book on the subject. 

“Butterflies we have a much better grasp on just because they are diurnal, they're much easier to see and identify. With moths, we don't even know how many there are. There's thousands of species in Ohio.”

He explains that caterpillars are the biggest group of herbivores by far, even bigger than deer. This is mostly moth caterpillars. Butterfly caterpillars are only a small percentage of that.

“If it weren’t for moths and their caterpillars converting plant material into a digestible protein for animals, we’d lose all our songbirds, among other things,” McCormac said. 

He explained we would likely lose a lot of non-songbirds, which would lead to the loss of predator birds that prey on smaller ones. The effect continues. 

“It would be an incredible cascading effect that would be deleterious for everything, including us. We would be doomed without them,” McCormac said.

“It would affect a whole worldview from people down to things that no one's ever heard of. I don't know how a group of organisms can get much more important than that.”

He continued, “That's one of my problems with [humans] is we think we're very separate from all this. I think that's what I see at least, and we're really not, because it all affects us. Those insects go, we go eventually. Those plants go. We go, eventually. I just would like to see people put themselves into that system a little more than we do because it affects us too."

McCormac describes himself as an optimist by nature, but he struggles to be optimistic on this front.

“It almost strikes me as most of the things we do, like planting native plants in our yards are just Band-Aids for something that's a much, much bigger problem that's not going to be solved,” McCormac said.

“But we need to be optimistic. That’s why I work with trying to get people to grow native plants. I want people to do good things, and I want to do 'em too. We can do good.”