Bug Life: How Bees, Butterflies, and Other Insects Rule the World

Bugs are everywhere! Humans often think of insects as gross or creepy, but we couldn’t survive without them.

In this love letter to bugs, biologist, linguist, and bug enthusiast Karyn Light-Gibson introduces us to an array of our notable neighbors, from bees to bedbugs, caterpillars to butterflies, ladybugs to katydids, and so, so many more. With informative glee and striking illustrations, she identifies the many bugs we encounter every day and delves into their place in science, history, art, literature, culture, cuisine, and even warfare.

You’ll learn so many cool facts about flies, beetles, moths, aphids, cicadas, bedbugs, crickets, cockroaches, and the other creeping, crawling, and flying critters that make our world go round. For every human, there are 1.4 billion insects in the world, playing a vital part of our ecosystem. A small percentage of bugs can be dangerous or spread disease, but the vast majority are our allies as indicators of environmental health, pollinators of our food, and a key part of the food web we rely on. Even the most wary readers will come away with a new perspective on the tiny creatures around them and a serious appreciation of just how important—and cool—bugs are.

Read on for an excerpt of Bug Life: How Bees, Butterflies, and Other Insects Rule the World by Karyn Light-Gibson, available for preorder from our site or your local bookseller (officially hitting shelves 3/25/25)!

Introduction: Here’s Why Bugs are Cool

How do you feel about bugs, curious reader? Scared, apprehensive, fascinated? Many people feel all of those things and more when they see something scurrying around on six (or more) legs. Even I, someone with an inordinate fondness for bugs, have experienced fear when finding a wasp in my bed. But I also know how captivating, intriguing, and under-appreciated all bugs can be. I aim to help others understand the positive aspects of bugs (even when those positive aspects are coupled with feelings of uncertainty). We should learn to at least appreciate these creatures, because without them, we would die. That isn’t an exaggeration; it’s just a fact. E.O. Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, said, “So important are insects and other land-dwelling arthropods, that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months.”*

For every single human, there are 1.4 billion insects.** For every one insect species that has been discovered, researchers estimate there are 10 unknown species. That means that although around a million species have been identified, 10 million unknown species may still be out there, waiting to be found. Invertebrates already account for about 95 percent of all species on earth. We as humans are seriously outnumbered. Thankfully, bugs are here to help. They support most of the food chain, they pollinate most of our food, and they decompose all that we don’t want. Without them, we would quickly have no food and be buried in waste. They were here long before us (and dinosaurs), and they will be here long after we are gone.

Even knowing all this doesn’t mean my faith in bugs hasn’t been tested. On the day I found out I would have the privilege to write this book, I found a bed bug running across my pillow. For a while, I stood there stunned, having heard about the horrors of eradicating them, and not willing to believe that this was happening. As an apartment dweller, it was particularly worrisome: Did they come from another apartment? Has anyone else seen one and not known what it was? After capturing the bug, texting people who lived in the twelve other apartments in the building, contacting our landlord, and doing my own inspection, I sat down to breathe. What an amazing way to celebrate writing a book about bugs (that’s sarcasm by the way)!

The bed bug experience continues to be psychologically exhausting: I still dry everything on high heat. I check the corners of the mattress multiple times a week. Our bed will forever be moved away from the walls. We have little bug catchers under the legs of the couch and bed. I constantly check every little piece of fuzz to be sure it is not one of them; however, this situation did lead me to learn more about them: their history, behavior, ecology. What I found was absolutely fascinating. Don’t get me wrong, having bed bugs blows and I would never wish them on anyone, but the bugs themselves are evolutionary marvels (more on that in chapter 14).

My fascination with wildlife began when I was growing up between a large city and a decent swath of woods. I was always discovering something new, the good and the bad. I’ll never forget pushing a dead raccoon into the creek and watching thousands of beetles abandon ship out of holes in the raccoon’s skin. Growing up, I wanted to be an entomologist (bug scientist) and was even set on that throughout high school. In college, my career desires shifted. I never forgot about bugs, though, and finally went back to school for a degree in biology where I focused on insect conservation. With all my powers combined, I knew that I finally possessed all of the know-how and passion to write a book to let people know how and why bugs are just so cool (and why humans have thought so for centuries).

This book is for the curious bug hater or the undying bug lover. For those of you who dislike bugs, this book is to help you appreciate how impactful they have been to human culture and why they aren’t such a bad thing. For those who already love bugs, the facts in this book will hopefully add to your already large amount of fascinating bug trivia. For everyone in between, this book will help you understand why we need bugs around, how they have defined culture, and how they will continue to be our saving grace in a world ravaged by human destruction. These little creatures need our help in order to survive because human interference has led to their decline. You don’t need to love them to appreciate them or get a sense of their role in everything. (Of course, I’m hoping you love them a little bit after reading!)

The inspiration for this book tries to capture the ideas presented by Dr. Pritha Dey, a moth biologist. They talk about how animal numbers are dwindling and that using art/poetry may be the way to tell the insects’ stories. For some species, those cultural works may survive longer than the animals will. Dr. Dey believes that together, science and art can be impactful:

When effectively told, such narratives can provide the incentive to appreciate what is overlooked and inspire us to seek more knowledge—all crucial steps towards saving dwindling populations of insects before we lose them.***

Each section of this book is divided by types of bugs, typically by what are called orders (more on that below). Within each section are chapters about the different suborders or families within that order. So for the order Lepidoptera, there is a chapter on caterpillars, one on butterflies, and one on moths. Each chapter includes information on how each type of bug shapes our world, how we can interact with them, and how they show up in culture.

I’ve talked a lot about bugs, but what are they even? I think most people define bug like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart defined porn: “I know it when I see it.” Similar to what is considered obscene, people have different ideas of what constitutes a bug. In this book, for the sake of brevity, I focus on insects (which are definitely “bugs”). However, it’s important to note that other non-insect invertebrates are included in the world of bugs.

So how do I plan to define bug?

Most importantly, bugs do not have a backbone (called invertebrates). It’s hard to tell whether or not they do just by looking at them, but mammals, reptiles, and birds all have backbones. Insects and other arthropods (another word for the backbone-less) can be identified by things like how many body segments, limbs, eyes, and mouthparts they have. The quickest way to determine what type of bug a spineless creature is may be by looking at the number of legs:

• 6 legs: it’s an insect

• 8 legs: it’s an arachnid

• More than 8 legs/no legs: probably a bug, but not an insect or arachnid

Even though we’ll only be covering insects in the pages to come, I want to thank all the bugs that didn’t fit in this book. Your time will come. . . .

NOTE: I would like to point out that while writing and researching this book, I saw articles almost daily that discussed some new super cool thing discovered about bugs. The facts in this book are only as current as early 2024. With a quick internet search, I’m sure you can find dozens of new things that they’ve discovered about insects in only the last month.

* Wilson E. O. (1992). The diversity of life. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
** That doesn’t even include other invertebrates like spiders, scorpions, and all ocean creatures without a backbone.
*** Dey, P. (2022, Feb 21). Fluttering to the flame: Moths in art, literature, and poetry.
Roundglass Sustain. roundglasssustain.com/wildvaults/moths.

Want to keep reading? Check out Bug Life: How Bees, Butterflies, and Other Insects Rule the World by Karyn Light-Gibson, available for preorder from our site or through an independent bookstore near you.