Gardeners often have a love-hate relationship with insects — loving the bees and ladybugs and hating the aphids and flea beetles, for example — but all insects have value, even if it isn’t always apparent to us. To discuss how insect allies are important partners in gardens and elsewhere, joining me this week is entomologist and artist Barrett Klein.
Barrett is a professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He studied entomology at Cornell and the University of Arizona, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin working with honeybees, and spent decades exploring the intersection between science, art and culture. His new book, “The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shaped Human Culture,” is the kind of read that makes you walk outside and see your garden and your whole world differently. From silk and honey to soil and pollination, Barrett makes the case that insects haven’t just shared our planet, they’ve shaped our civilization. You will appreciate his fresh perspective on growing an appreciation for insects and the vital role they have in this world.
Entomologist Barrett Klein is a a professor of biology and an artist.
Photo: Courtesy of Barrett Klein
“Wherever you live, whatever you’re wearing, whatever your domicile is like, it’s worth looking around and then asking yourself, ‘How have non-human organisms made my world, affected my environment?’” Barrett says.
‘ A World without Insects’ and Barrett’s Origin Story
Barrett says from the introduction to his book:
A world without insects. What does it take to spark a child’s passion for the natural world?
A dead butterfly caught my eye, halted my play on a bright, sunny day, and filled me with a curious exhilaration. I was five, living on the outskirts of Detroit, had no experience with wild areas, and only the simplest connection to the animals around me. But here in my hand was the delicate body of a once living animal.
I admired the intricate parts, the jointed legs, coiled tongue, bulbous eyes, beaded antennae and vibrant colors. Through the tragedy of such a beautiful organism’s death, I’d received a gift and took advantage of the opportunity by examining every detail.
The body was not as fragile as I imagined it would be. I could stretch the legs and open the wings, and obtain a sense of how this individual had recently lived and moved.
Here was a natural marvel that deserved my attention and my care. What else was out there? My mind whirled and my body tingled with electric anticipation that sustains me even today.
I was a little boy in my backyard, and it was as if the world of natural wonders had suddenly become accessible to me. Though I had no idea what the future would look like, one thing was certain: my life had to be full of insects.
“When I was thinking about how to open the book I wondered if it would be valuable to have a first-person perspective at all, or if I should remove the human and really focus on the insects,” Barrett says. “And I found that when I approached my students in entomology and had them read some sections, they were really drawn to the personal portions of the book.
He decided to open the book with his “origin story” — a true story.
“I have this vivid recollection of holding that insect and having this electricity run through me, and it was a special moment,” he says. “And I thought of it as kind of a nebulous epiphany where I didn’t know how insects would affect and dominate my life, but I knew they had to.”
Barrett grew up in a family of artists, which was also a great influence.
A lot of people are daunted by art, and others may be daunted by science, he notes. But for him art was a part of life, and when he was drawn to insects, he connected the two.
“ If you have hidden talents or hobbies, maybe you don’t need to avoid them, take a detour or hide them, or save them for a rainy day or later in life,” Barrett says. “Maybe you can combine them. One can augment the other and vice versa. And so I use art all the time in my science, and science inspires the art.”
A viola with its insect influences.
Photo Credit: Korinthia Klein
From Bug Kid to Career Path
“Insects are so diverse,” Barrett observes. “Not just in their size, shape, color, beauty, but in the way they behave, and I became enamored with their behaviors. And so I looked for that diversity of organisms from fluctuating populations. Maybe there would be this explosion of stag beetles emerging from the earth or dog-day cicadas and the cacophony in the trees. So from the sounds to the sights and sometimes the smells, you could detect a great grand diversity of insects even in a very urban environment.”
As a child, he started bringing insects and other creatures indoors and had a little “zoo” of arthropods.
“Everything seemed to magically reproduce, so my parents were just lovely, accommodating, tolerant, and more than tolerant — they really embraced my passion as well as my brother’s and my sister’s passions,” he says.
When he was 5, his father gave him a book on insects. His father also began to collect clippings of articles on insects for Barrett, and he still has them to this day.
“ Borrowing from the humanities through my parents, I started to really get interested in cultural entomology or how insects impact humans across the world and through history,” he says. “ But that came much later. While I gathered the articles about insects and art and in poetry and music and war and politics and every facet of human existence, I was really getting into the science. So I would read book after book about insects, and I’d watch them when they were indoors metamorphose, eclose into adults, spreading their wings.”
When he applied for college, he was torn between majoring in art, filmmaking or entomology.
“ I realized that while, yes, you can attain so much through a filmmaking or art major and academic trajectory, I knew that I couldn’t go anywhere in science without professional training and a degree,” he says. ”So I decided to couple my science- and insect-focused coursework with art courses, filmmaking courses, and that was a huge boon for me.”
Between earning his undergraduate degree in science and going back for graduate work, he took a couple years off from his entomology studies to explore how he could professionally focus on insects as a common theme in the art world.
Barrett made natural history displays at Chase Studio in the Ozarks and then at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
“Even today, I’m working on a natural history display for a museum in Pennsylvania on sericulture, or the production of silk by silkworm moths,” he adds.
Barrett Klein in an ant costume.
Photo Courtesy of Barrett Klein
Reaching the Insect Skeptics
Far too many people don’t get insects, and usually, at best, they just tolerate them. Some do whatever they can to get rid of them. I wonder, how do we wake those people up and get them to appreciate insects too?
“A multifaceted approach is essential,” Barrett says, “So science is absolutely necessary, but it appears that it’s insufficient. … To reach the hearts and minds of the masses, you need more.”
He talks to people about how insects perform essential ecosystem services as pollinators, decomposers, soil aerators, seed dispersers, food and more.
“ But when you tap into something that might hit closer to home for people, it might resonate better,” he says. “And for some that can be music, for some that can be art, for some that can be poetry, for some it can be talking about how they affect the very material culture on which we depend.”
Barrett collaborated with fellow entomologist Tierney Brosius at Augustana College and decided to write an article and a book chapter on how artists have used insects as muses to convey ideas about how humans are destroying the living planet in different ways. That includes habitat destruction, the global climate crisis, and pollution of various sorts, including light pollution, he says.
“Navigating the art world for examples like that was really inspirational to me, and I felt even though I was presenting it to this in a scholarly way to an academic community through peer-reviewed publication and a book chapter, I ended up giving talks about it, and that reached more people and I think affected more people,” he says. “Because you have to reach people through storytelling — accurate, clear storytelling — and try to change emotional states.”
He finds that talking about aesthetics can be more effective than talking about quantifications, such as the benefits of bees in terms of dollar amounts or crop yields
Insect Arts Projects
Barrett has used insects for some quirky projects, like making a honeycomb Halloween mask. He’s also given one of his books to a honeybee colony to make their wax combs on and he has also given copies to termites and firebrats to devour.
He says his mask might humor, excite and intrigue people, and that’s a beautiful segue into a fun lesson.
He has also put a recycled bicycle helmet into a beehive and taken it out a few weeks later to show off how they constructed their “exquisite prismatic hexagonal wax cells” as a wearable piece of art.
“ There are a lot of different ways that people can and should communicate the value of biodiversity,” Barrett says.
Barrett’s “Hive Helmet.”
Photo Credit: Barrett Klein
Insects’ Underappreciated Work for Gardeners
Insects do a lot for gardeners that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Homo sapiens have been farmers for 12,000 years or so.
“I’ve got farmers that are 55 to 60 million years old,” Barrett says. “These are fungus-growing ants, and there are a handful of species outside of Homo sapiens that are farmers. And so what does farming mean? Well, in a sense, it’s a very careful, deliberate yielding of edibles. And it’s a concerted process, and with these fungus-growing ants, what they’re doing is they’re building a monoculture — a single fungal cultivar by collecting plant material and feeding it to their mushroom garden.”
Many insects are also helpers when it comes to farms operated by humans.
There are insects that gardeners and farmers are generally not fans of. We call them “pests.” Barrett says another way to think about them is that they are sharing our bounty that we decided to grow, and in turn, they are benefiting other species, like the songbirds that eat them.
“ The effects are vast, and if we start killing everybody who gets even mildly in our way, not only are we in trouble, but all those we claim to love and enjoy in our midst are in trouble,” Barrett says.
Above-ground, there are a number of insects that, in our anthropocentric view, we consider beneficial insects. These include predators, parasites and parasitoids that keep “pest” populations in check. Below-ground, ants and other species aerate the soil and disperse seeds.
I get a lot of questions from people that check in with me about what to do with the ants that are in their garden beds. If they are black ants, I tell them, “Nothing to see here. They’re doing great work. They’re aerating the soil. They’re part of the soil food web.” Instead of trying to get rid of them, celebrate the fact that they are there.
A portrait of Barrett Klein.
Photo Credit: Karen Anne Klein
Insect Decline
“A science publication suggested that every third bite we consume of our food is thanks to animal pollinators, and most animal pollinators are insects,” Barrett says.
In a village in China where the population decided to use apple orchards as their main source of income, their apple trees were not successful because native pollinators had been stamped out by insecticides. They had to resort to bringing in honeybees but also hand-pollinating with feather dusters the flowers on the trees.
David Wagner at the University of Connecticut said something that stuck with me: In regards to insect decline, “We notice the losses. It’s the diminishment we don’t see.”
“There’s nothing too small that we can do to change the world collectively in really profound and beautiful ways, and we shouldn’t fall victim to learned helplessness even in dire times,” Barrett says. “ If you feel like we’re in a nadir, that’s all the more reason to lift ourselves up and have positive effects on those around us.”
Pie chart of the diversity of life by Barrett Klein. A butterfly, representing insects, is the biggest slice of the pie.
Photo Credit: Barrett Klein
If you haven’t listened to my conversation with Barrett Klein on how insect allies shape human culture, you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
How have you made alliances with insects? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Episode 258: Averting the Insect Apocalypse, with Dave Goulson
Episode 354: How Pesticide Regulations Fail Pollinators, with the Xerces Society
Episode 374: The Insect Crisis: How Losing the Little Things Creates Big Problems
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joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
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joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
Barrett Klein University of Wisconsin La Crosse
Barrett Klein in Instagram | @barrettklein
Barrett Klein on X | @pupating
Barrett Klein TEDx Talk: A world without insects?
Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
“The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture” by Barrett Klein
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