Corinne Eby., age 10, of Lancaster,, Panne., or the quest on:

How many kinds of insects are there?

Insects are the most plentiful animals around us. Of course, there may be more and greater varieties of the one‑celled animals, but these are too small for us to sea. Of the creatures we can see end count insects outnumber all others put together. There are more bees than there are bunnies, more mosquitos than mice and more grasshoppers than giraffes.

Think of all the different varieties of fish, birds, snakes and four. footed beasties. Such:a list runs into hundreds of thousands. But it is not so long as the list of different insects. Not only do insects outnumber all other animals, they come in a greater variety.

The study, sorting, classifying and counting of all these insects is a mammouth job. It is far from finished. About 5,000 unclassified insects are sorted, named and classified each your. Experts estimate that from two thirds to nine tenths of the work is yet to be done. So far we have classified 650,000 different kinds of insect. If we estimate this as one third then there are about two million different insects in the world.

The entire animal kingdom is classified under huge phyla, or clans. One such phylum is Arthropods, meaning those with jointed feet. A phylum is subdivided into classes. The insects belong in the class Insects of the phylum Arthropods.

The class Insects is further subdivided into about 25 orders. Flies are classed in the order Diptera ‑ the two‑winged ones. Moths are classed in the order Lepidoptera ‑ the scaly‑winged ones. Wasps, ants and bees belong to the order Hynenopters ‑ the gauzy winged ones.

We tend to consider insects a nuisance and perhaps wish they would all fly away to another planet. If this great emigration did happen our world would be vary different, indeed. Thorn would be no morn mosquito bites, no via sp or bee stings. The diseases carried by certain insects would be wiped out. There would be no flies to spoil our food, no boll weevils to spoil the cotton crop. It  is estimated. that various insects destroy about a billion dollars worth  of our crops ovary year all this would be saved.

Or would it? Remember that bees and other insects help fertilize plants. The desert yucca end many other plants could not survive without help from the insects. As for crops, we would have no oranges, no apples, no grapes and no cotton. There would be no clover to food our cattle. These crops are helpless without insects to pollinate them. And, surely a billion dollars is a small price to pay for all this food.

Without bees, of course, there would b© no honey: And we would certainly miss the pretty butterflies. Without insects our world would lose a lot of other beauties. There would be no woodpeckers, no swallows and no swifts. There would be no wrens wad no sweet rocking birds, no robins and no bluebirds. There would be no frogs and many fish would starve. For these and. countless other creatures depend upon a diet of insects.