Ruud Kleinpaste: More brilliant bugs with fabulous jobs

Last week we started to look at the jobs bugs do on Earth. This topic was launched by some teachers during the Blake Inspire sessions, out there in Nature. It became a bit of a game to question what their role is in ecological systems – especially critters that are usually perceived as a pain in the bum. 

Gardeners often complain about almost every creature that inhabits the soil; holes and tunnels, little hills of clay, and messy poos in vegetable gardens, lawns, and orchards are often not seen as beneficial; but many certainly are!  

These insects are the larvae and pupae of Crane Flies. Soil cleaning and dead wood in the soil – recyclers maintaining soil health.  

Pollinators are everywhere: butterflies, flies, native bees, wasps, parasitic wasps, hoverflies, beetles, thrips – it’s a huge gig on the planet!  

These laay eggs in their hosts. Population control. 

Geotrupes spiniger – the Paua dungbeetle, introduced in New Zealand to put dung back into the soil. It not only puts fertiliser where it is most efficient but also returns carbon back into the soil where it is most needed (rather than in the air!).  

Then there are Mosquitoes! One of the most hated insects in our garden: some species bite humans.  Males do not bite – they are great pollinators of our flowers. Mozzies are food for native birds, dragonflies, spiders, etc. 

Those famous mosquito larvae (often known as “wrigglers”) go up and down the pond and other water habitats. The very cool and useful thing they do is cleaning the “bacterial soup”.   

Wrigglers are also food for native aquatic insects: backswimmers, water-boatman, water striders, native fish, etc. If you think about it: Mozzies do some great jobs. To fuel this ecological system, all we need to do is make a tiny donation…  

… and be a bit more tolerant!  

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at be.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Rude climb past as our man in the garden. He's
with us this morning, killed the rude kyoda, Jackie.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
I wasn't a garden. I wasn't a big garden this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Oh then your place or somewhere else?

Speaker 4 (00:24):
No, no farm, very good, okay, yeah, yeah yeah. We
were putting Eddie Edouard is my twelve year old friend son.
He suddenly got interested in doing some work with Harry,
so he decided to team up with me. We put
five trips down and this afternoon we're going to see
who got in.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Oh fantastic, Well can you catch something even in the
last even in the next couple of hours.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
We put We put all these these wonderful baits in,
like frozen ducks and frozen pigeons, and they chew on
them and basically they tripped, so we we didn't put
the ring around them their legs and all the sort
of nose.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
He and he and he broke up before do you
say Harry like Harry hawks her are yes here?

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, okay, yeah, sorry.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
And and he's big enough to to actually carry them
and weigh them. Now, so we've got this little spring balance.
And then from the from the amount of weight that
they put only tells me whether he thinks it's a
male or female, because the females are usually about the
kilo and the males are about six hunder grainsten.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Do they have talons?

Speaker 2 (01:29):
And I can I scratch you out badly?

Speaker 4 (01:32):
Well, the talons are very hard to get out of
your hands.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
You use your teeth to get them out. Oh my god,
I'm not joking. They are that's serious stuff. So he
has learned, he learns how to hold them and yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
That kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
No, wow, man, hands, he used your hands.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, that sounds like fun. That sounds amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah. Yeah, these things go on.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
These things, of course do a job on the planet
because they actually eat dead birds and things like that
they find. That's how we trap them. So when I
thought last week we talked about other things that you know,
and what the jobs they do on the planet, so
I thought I'd carry on a little bit.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Please done. Yeah right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
So for instance, and you'll see that the people that
you can see it on the website. Of course, crane flies,
you know, You know crane flies, don't you are, those
big deady long like flies.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
That sit on the wall.

Speaker 4 (02:30):
Right, Yeah, Well, the babies basically do an absolutely brilliant
job in your vegetable garden because they sit in the
soil and make holes and tunnels and they literally create
very fertile soil that way.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
So that's what they do. It's absolutely wonderful. They clean,
They clean the soil and so on and so forth.
So that is exactly what they do.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
And you ask anybody what do butterflies do and flies,
and of course they're pollinated. Yeah, they do nothing in
your garden but fertilize everything that flowers.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
And where we were a few weeks ago, obviously that
the number of butterflies is just ridiculous. You know, they
have they have all these kind of butterfly sanctuaries and things.
But yeah, and presumably they're all doing the same thing.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
They do, that's their job. Yeah, And guess what tukan
does the same sort of thing. It eats the fruits
of everything that has been fertilized and then they pop
out the seeds, so they are actually seed disperses.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Okay, you're right, are very good, so.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Are all these things going on there.

Speaker 4 (03:38):
So there's parasitic wasps and I put some pictures in
this hall ones that lay eggs inside caterpillars, and those
eggs hatch inside those caterpillars into little wasps babies, if
you like, And they basically kill all the pests you
don't want the garden.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
So you know, you can say what you like about them,
but they do a good job. Yeah, okay, yeah, nice
bun dung beetles.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Love a dung beetles, absolutely love a dunk beetle.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Thinks we've got they're lovely.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
We've got about seven or eight species in New Zealand
now and dung beetle Innovation is looking after them.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
These guys basically put.

Speaker 4 (04:15):
Dun back into the soil by burying it deep down
and thereby making your garden quite or in this case
you're fun quite fertile.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Again.

Speaker 4 (04:25):
That is absolutely brilliant how they do that. And the
cool thing is we've just realized that they actually also
change the cycle of.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
All the if you like, carbon.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
That usually needs to be taken into the soil, and
dun burtles do that too where it belongs in the soil.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
What about mosquitoes, what about why do we need mosquitoes?

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Right, everybody hates a good mosquito.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
A well, females are the ones that bite people, but
males do not bite. They are pollinators, yes, of all
our native plants.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
It comes another thing.

Speaker 4 (05:02):
If mosquitoes fly around your garden, their food for native birds,
for dragonfly, for spiders, for anything else that wants to
eat their protein. And here it comes the coolest thing
of all the mosquito larvae. Those rigulars that go up
and down in your pond.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
They clean the bacteria out of their water. Shall they
clean water?

Speaker 2 (05:22):
That is pretty amazing?

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Hey beg you served me day.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Catch again next week Rude Climb pass

Speaker 1 (05:27):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, Listen live
to news talks that'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.