Celebrating the mind-blowing diversity of invertebrates

We are a tiny minority – barely 5% of all known living creatures are animals that have backbones like us. The rest – well over 1.3 million – are invertebrates.

These spineless animals of wondrous diversity and fascinating lifestyles are the reason the rest of us are alive. We owe them everything and yet in most human societies and cultures there seems little recognition of their importance.

This inspired us on the Guardian environment desk to launch the UK invertebrate of the year competition, and the response from readers has been amazing.

But first, this week’s most important reads.

I took on the nearly impossible task of selecting a shortlist of 10 from the 40,000-plus invertebrates found in Britain. The only things I really know anything about are butterflies (a childhood passion) and the 59 native British species are definitely overrepresented in our culture. Even so, I succumbed to one butterfly (the swallowtail) and one moth (the Clifden nonpareil, pictured above) and then a selection of other invertebrates, common and rare, thriving and struggling.

Each one has a story and, I hope, prods us into interrogating how we live today.

The Clifden nonpareil is one of those beautiful species prospering in an era of global heating, but the extinguishing of the light of the glowworm reveals how our electric lights are robbing us of one of the most miraculous, poetic and romantic of beetles.

The fabulously named distinguished jumping spider reveals the importance of brownfield post-industrial landscapes for nature. Please, future governments, don’t assume that building houses on invertebrate-rich brownfield land is better than on often-lifeless greenfield sites.

The yellow-legged or Asian hornet is an invasive, predatory emissary of human globalisation that is dismaying beekeepers across Europe. We have failed to stop it establishing itself in Britain but, actually, will our worst fears prove unfounded? It appears to be a bee-guzzling machine, but if our flying insect populations were healthy would we have anything to fear?

My shortlist cannot possibly do justice to the full mind-blowing diversity and glorious genius of invertebrates and this, happily, is where readers are helping out.

We’ve invited readers to nominate their “people’s choice”, which we will add to the shortlist for final voting at the end of this week. We’ve been inundated with utterly brilliant submissions, and it is not too late to add yours.

Inevitably, there have been a lot of nominations for Rishi (“regularly proves himself a supine, protoplasmic invertebrate jelly”) and a few for Keir (focus-group that finding, Labour), but mostly there has been a grand diversity of nominees.

The reasons for nominations can be divided into roughly three categories. There are animals that are charismatic and astounding: cuttlefish (“the UK’s best inky boys”), the emerald damselfly, the green drake mayfly, the banded demoiselle, and lots of hawkmoths (poplar, privet, hummingbird – these hefty-bodied, spectacular-looking big moths are all incredible). Some are also particularly rare or special: the bronze Lundy cabbage flea beetle is a good shout because it is a rare endemic, only found on one tiny island in our archipelago.

Then there are invertebrates who are fantastically useful and perform vital ecosystem services: the many species of earthworm, the soil-makers; the common sexton beetle, a burying bettle; red mason bees (“the best pollinators”, they are also “outrageously ginger”); and millipedes (“the unsung hero of the woodland floor, important for decomposition, provides nutrients for the rest of the ecosystem and has a lot of feet”).

Of this category, one unsung hero is leading the way: the woodlouse. Who knew the 3,000-plus species of woodlice were so popular? They are the “little troopers of the insect world doing so much for us that most are not aware of,” writes one reader, who also likes how they love being with each other. Woodlice, like ants and colonial bee species, are relatable.

This is important for us. Perhaps the biggest category of nominated invertebrates are those we have a relationship with: the whirligig beetle we remember from childhood ponds; the spiders we know from our homes; Howie the crab from TikTok. Among this crowd are several particularly moving and compelling nominations for the common cockchafer or May bug. As one reader puts it: “It’s more like a cumbersome imaginary miniature flying turtle from an Alice in Wonderland adventure, but there it is – existing undeniably on this planet.”

This outpouring of love for other apparently insignificant creatures is hugely heartening. So many of us have woken up to the wonder of life on Earth. Somehow, collectively, we just need to find a way to live more lightly alongside it.

Nominate your UK invertebrate of the year here.

Read more on invertebrates:

The good news

The bad news

Profiling an inspiring individual, suggested by Down to Earth readers

Reporting last month from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, the Guardian’s Sarah Johnson met Esteban Polanco, one of the nation’s leading defenders of its lands. Polanco has put his body on the line for his beliefs, once surviving an attack by 10 men who threw a molotov cocktail at him and his children.

“I was close to death, and it took a year to recover,” Polanco tells Johnson of the 2007 attack – which he believes was retaliation for his work protecting the environment. Latin America is known to be dangerous for environmental activists – 88% of the 177 murders of land and environmental defenders globally in 2022 took place in the region.

“The situation for defenders is more dangerous than ever,” says Polanco. “[Mining companies and ranchers] exhaust more resources every day, and they are more aggressive. We have to keep fighting harder because they are going into areas much more vulnerable than those they have already damaged.”

If you’d like to nominate a climate hero, email downtoearth@theguardian.com

Demystifying a climate concept you’ve heard in the headlines

Many scientists believe that human civilisation has jolted the Earth’s physical, chemical and biological processes into a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. This age has been defined by a plethora of destructive impacts, including global heating, deforestation, resource extraction, ocean acidification, species extinctions, habitat destruction, and plastics production.

For more Guardian coverage of the Anthropocene, click here

One image that sums up the week in environmental news

Credit: Media Drum World/Alamy

Hundreds of wild elephants in India are dying as railways cut through their habitats. (The animal in the picture above was lucky to survive as the busy commuter train managed to come to a stop inches away from them in West Bengal.) From New Delhi, Amrit Dhillon asks whether the use of AI and “animal flyovers” can prevent further deaths.

For more of the week’s best environmental pictures, catch up on The Week in Wildlife here