Rose Chafer ©Derek Moore
Often overlooked, insects play a vital role in supporting healthy ecosystems, pollinating plants, recycling nutrients and providing food for birds, bats and other wildlife.
In fact, around 85% of crops in the UK depend on insect pollination. Yet many of the insects carrying out this essential work, go unnoticed, despite living close to us. It is time to shine the spotlight on a few of these amazing, unsung heroes.
Zebra Jumping Spider © Jon Hawkins - Surrey Hills Photography
Zebra jumping spiders can be found on fences, sheds and sunny walls. Despite their tiny size, they have exceptional eyesight and can jump many times their own body length. Some will even turn to look at people who approach them, giving them a curious personality.
Yellow-faced bees are small solitary bees that often nest in holes in dead wood, walls and bee hotels. Males of some species are known for blowing tiny nectar bubbles! Patchwork leafcutter bees can be identified by the neat circular cuts they leave in leaves, which are used to build their nests. A brilliant ‘bee hotel’ species.
Helen Alloush
Scarlet tiger moths are one of the UK’s most striking moths, with dark wings flashing bright red underneath. The cinnabar moth is also easy to spot, earlier in their lifecycle as a black and yellow stripped caterpillars, usually feeding on ragwort.
Maybug (C) Acer Bere-Cheetham
The maybug (or cockchafer) spend up to five years underground as larvae before emerging for just a few weeks as adults. You’ll recognise them as being large brown beetles with a noisy, bumbling flight on warm evenings in late spring and early summer. Despite their brief appearance above ground, they form an important part of the food web, providing food for birds, bats and other wildlife.
Ruby-tailed wasp (C) Nick Upton
The ruby-tailed wasp, sometimes known as a jewel wasp, dazzles with metallic reds, blues and greens created not by pigments, but by microscopic structures that reflect light. These tiny insects love bee hotels, sunbaked wood and bare ground, where they play their own role in the ecosystem.
The rose chafer is an absolutely beautiful beetle (as seen in the header image of this blog), with a metallic green sheen, often spotted feeding on flowers during summer. As it moves from flower to flower, plant pollination is happening.
Crab Spider (C) Jon Hawkins – Surrey Hills Photography
Flower crab spiders can change between white and yellow to blend perfectly with the flowers they sit on, waiting to ambush unsuspecting prey. Meanwhile, the currant clearwing moth is so convincing in its imitation of a wasp that many people never realise it is a moth at all!
Special thanks to Alex Dommett, Urban Nature Recovery Manager, for recommending these amazing insects that are easy to spot.
Many of these insects face challenges from habitat loss, climate change and pesticide use. The good news is that small actions make a big difference. Having a wild patch with longer grasses, log piles, bug and bee hotels, growing native wildflowers, not using pesticides or chemicals and protecting hedgerows and trees, all make a difference to these fascinating and the wider ecosystem.
Climate change is altering the timing of nature. Warmer temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and more frequent extreme weather can disrupt insect life cycles and the plants they depend on. Flowers may bloom before pollinators emerge, drought can reduce nectar sources, and storms or heatwaves can damage important habitats.
