BEETLES AS PART OF THE FOOD WEB

With hundreds of thousands of species, and

billions of individuals occupying a huge range of

ecological niches, it is not surprising that beetles

form an essential part of most terrestrial food

webs. For example, a recent study from

a Swiss university estimated that birds

around the world eat 440 to 550 million

tons (400 to 500 million tonnes) of

beetles and other arthropods per year.

It is difficult to imagine the number of

individual insects in 550 million tons,

but it certainly puts the collecting of a

few thousand specimens by entomologists

into perspective!

If you were to remove beetles, many

terrestrial ecosystems would rapidly collapse.

A great deal of the concern in the media about

recent evidence of insect decline is not concern

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Beetles as part of the food web