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Photo: Anki-itte (CC BY-NC-ND)
Insects. I sometimes get the feeling most people see them as either a nice decoration in their gardens (butterflies) or something you would rather not have at all (the rest of them). But, as I wrote here last week about the bees : Without insects to pollinate our plants. we would soon be out of food.
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Alingsås' first insect hotel. Note the four stars on top! Photo: Sara Jeswani.
In Alingsås [map], the local Transition group, which is working for a more resilient Alingsås, has made an insect hotel, to attract all kinds of insects to their community garden (photo to the right). In cities, with their well-kept lawns and big areas covered with asphalt, these small inhabitants often have problems to find good places to live. So in Alingsås a group of about 20 children, adults and elders gathered to construct this insect hotel. made of recycled materials, clay pots, twigs and straw. Now it’s there to take care of its guest, and to remind people about all we have to thank these little fellows for.
But the declining number of insects has started to concern scientists more and more, since it could also be a symptom of bigger environmental changes. To keep track of these changes, the Department of Biology at the Lund University runs a butterfly monitoring scheme where volunteers spend their summer observing and reporting all the butterflies they see.
This project started last year, and gives scientists good information about what is happening to butterflies, which also says a lot about general environmental changes, since butterflies are especially affected by this.
