Insect Fair Research Paper

Did you know that bees are found in almost every corner of the globe and make almost all crop life through its pollination? Maybe you did, but we tend not to think about it very often. And by it I mean the insects. Seemingly countless bees, and all insects for that matter, stretch throughout all of planet Earth. This ridiculously large amount of insects is split up between six million and ten million different species. That’s an insane amount of variety! The Insect Fair puts this variety into perspective. I spoke with the manager of the Farm Store Dawn Taccone about the fair. He noted how diverse all the arthropods are from each other, saying, “[they] have 500,000 insects split between several thousand different species.”
My first stop was to one of my all-time favorites, the caterpillars. Unfortunately you can not touch most of them since they can be poisonous, but they can be surprisingly pretty! One of my personal favorites was the rose slug caterpillar. I thought it was amazing how an insect can adapt to have the spines on their back like how the rose slug has its. It also had a pretty blue pattern down its
back, between the spines.
After the caterpillars, I made sure to go to my personal favorite, the mantises.
Praying mantises are found all over the planet and in my opinion are some of the most diverse and fantastic looking insects. They are also harmless to people, and can actually be quite good farming partners since they eat the pests! Of all the mantises, my favorite would have to be the orchid mantis. This mantis imitates a flower with its body, and it is quite a shocking resemblance when its wings are spread. To get a feel for how all these mantises are different, one would truly have to come to the fair. It is as if you could custom build your own. They come in every color and have all different types of attributes. Some are tall, some are long. Some have skinny, smooth bodies. Some have wide and rough bodies. And there are all kinds of mantises to fill up in between the
gaps.
There are so many insects that you could spend half your day learning about one of them and be there for years. If you think there are a lot of mantises, wait until you see the beetles. Some people do not like the insects, however. My friend six year music student Matthew Borgialli does not share the same liking for insects as I do. I asked him why he had such a negative opinion on insects, and Matthew replied, “Bugs get everywhere and have only ever been a problem to me, especially ants.” I asked what his favorite part about the fair was and he jokingly replied that it was the preserved bugs, but deep down I do not believe he was actually joking. The fair has an impressive collection of butterflies and moths, dead and alive. Matthew pointed out how these are better than the living butterflies because you can still enjoy their patterns and colors on a real body without it moving or flying around. He makes a good point, but living butterflies always seemed friendlier to me.
Insects are remarkable constructs of nature and can be very pleasant and even friendly! Of course, we cannot forget about the pests that come with them, like mosquitos or tics. But whether we like them or not, these insects will outlive us for millennia to come. I had a great time at the insect fair and it open my eyes to some of the diversity that this planet has to offer, and that is definitely something that we should not take for granted.