Small animals play a much bigger role in our lives than we think and we also need to include them in our conservations efforts, writes Prof Michael Samways of the Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology in an article published on The Conversation website recently.

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Intertwined lives in a hidden world

We think we rule the planet, and we are hard wired to do so. But our ruling has not been successful, with the next mass extinction event upon us.  This time it is not a meteorite that is causing all this loss of life, but us.  Geologists have even given this new era in the history of the Earth a new name, the Anthropocene, the age of humans.  It is the first time in the history of the Earth where one species dominates all the others.

But how many 'others' are there?  Probably about 10 million.  And the vast majority of these are the invertebrates, the animals without backbones.  Not all are so small, with some squids and jellyfish being several metres long or across. 

Most though are small and unassuming, and are hidden in plain view.  They are there, but we rarely see them.  They are busy maintaining the fabric of the world around us.  They are the warp and weft of all natural systems. They do this by making the soil, pollinating the flowers, spreading seeds, and recycling of valuable nutrients back into the soil.  They are also food for many of the birds that we love so much, and they keep other small animals in check by eating or parasitizing them.

Yet most of us are oblivious to all the valuable roles that these mostly small, even tiny, animals in their millions play in all aspects of the world around us.  If all their services were gone tomorrow, many plants would soon go extinct, crops would be lost overnight, many birds would die from lack of food, and soil formation would largely hold.  The knock-on effects would also be huge as food webs collapse, and the world as we know it would quite literally fall apart.

So what can we do about saving all these small animals?  As the future of our children depends on these small animals, we must focus on increasing awareness among the young.  Research has shown that children are intrinsically interested in what a bee, cricket, butterfly or snail is.  Their small world is at the same level as this small world of insects and all their allies without backbones. Yet strangely, while we care about our children, we care so little for all the small creatures on which our children depend on now and into the future. 

What we must do is show them that the bee is keeping the flower alive, the grasshopper is recycling scarce food requirements for plants, the millipede is making the soil, and the ladybug is stopping pests from eating all our food.  Showing children that this miniature world is there, and that we all depend on it, is probably one of the best things we can do to help them survive the future in this world of turmoil.

Being aware of the actual animals, 'the species', is an important window for beginning to understand the huge complexities of the world around us, and which scientifically we are only just beginning to understand. We should point out that a bee is giving us those flowers, and an ant is the cleaner of the forest floor, taking away all the debris from other small animals, and the caterpillar is feeding the soil by pooing on it.  Then we can conceptually jump to the whole landscape, where there are millions of little claws, mandibles and tongues holding, munching and sucking nectar all the time, yet we rarely actually see it all happening.

A good way to understand this complexity is view a small community of 1000 species leading potentially to half a million interactions between the various species.  Yet the natural communities around us are usually much larger than that.  This makes understanding this world too mind boggling, and conserving its complexity too unwieldy. What this means is that for conservation, while we use conceptual icons, like the bee and the butterfly, we actually aim to conserve landscapes intact so that all the natural processes can continue as they would without humans. 

Conservationists have developed approaches and strategies that maintain all the natural processes intact in defined areas.  The processes that are conserved include behavioural activities, ecological interactions and evolutionary trends.  This umbrella approach is highly effective for conserving the great complexity of the natural world. This does not mean that we overlook particular species. 

Small-creature conservationists in reality work on and develop strategies that work at three levels.  The first is at the larger scale of the landscape. The second is the medium scale of the features of the landscape, which includes features like logs, ponds, rock crevices, patches of special plants, among many others.  The third is the still smaller scale of the actual species.  When we say 'smaller scale' this is really about a conceptual scale because some particular species actually need large spatial areas to survive.  At this fine scale of species, we focus attention on identified species that need special attention in their own right. 

While we so often think that it is only tigers, whales and parrots that need conserving, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of small creatures that all need special conservation focus. And this focus becomes increasingly and critically important as every year, if not every day, that passes.  We must think and conserve all these small animals that make up the platform for our future survival on the planet.

*Prof Michael Samways is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology at Stellenbosch University.