Transcript:

ambience: Crickets

Insects may be small, but don't underestimate them. They're managing to both outnumber and outlast all the other creatures on earth. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by DuPont. The oldest living species is a type of beetle that's been around for 35 million years. Scott Elias of the University of Colorado at Boulder says one reason that beetles and other insects have thrived is that there's evolutionary strength in numbers.

"If you produce a thousand eggs, if only one of those eggs represents a slightly different genetic mutation that's gonna succeed, then you've succeeded in that population to respond to the next environmental change. And because they're reproducing every year and sometimes multiple times a year, if you multiply out for instance how many offspring a couple of fruit flies could have let's say over a six year period, basically you could produce a ball of fruit flies that would be the size of the moon."

Insects have also been able to adapt to global changes because it's easy for them to migrate. But Scott Elias says now that people have populated so much of the earth, the patches of prime insect habitat have become farther and farther apart. Some species may not be able to adapt to global warming by migrating, and could become instinct. Still, it's pretty likely that some kind of insect will eventually prove to be the last earthly creature still standing...or crawling...or flying.

"There are insects that are highly resistant to radiation, to chemical toxicity. In the 1950's, you could pretty much kill any insect with DDT but as a graduate student I did an experiment where we had cockroaches and we fed them DDT and they ate it , didn't kill them. They've adapted well to pesticides. Even if all mammalian life is gone, there'll still be insects."

Pulse of the Planet is presented by DuPont, bringing you the miracles of science, with additional support provided by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner. music