After a 100-year flood struck south central Oklahoma in 2015, a study of the insects, arthropods, and other invertebrates in the area revealed striking declines of most invertebrates in the local ...

But not only do we need invertebrates for our own survival; they’re also great bang for our conservation buck. Australia has about 300,000 terrestrial invertebrate species.

While beetles alone make up one in four animal species on Earth, the group they belong to, the invertebrates (animals lacking backbones), comprise 96 percent of all species.

When the rainforests burned, the leaf litter did too – and with it, billions of invertebrates vital to healthy ecosystems.