Insects today

Thanks to their extreme adaptability to the most diverse living conditions, Insects today populate every region of the earth, including arid desert areas and perpetually frozen polar ones: for this reason this group is by far numerically superior to any other, in both the animal and the plant kingdoms, in number both of species and of individuals. The polar regions, for example, are inhabited by billions of Culicidae, whose eggs survive the freezing polar winter to hatch during the very short summer period. In eastern Asia, by contrast, the larvae of Ephydra live and develop in springs whose temperature reaches +55°C; other Insects, again, have made their home in the mother liquors of salt pans or even in oil wells.

To date more than one and a half million animal species have been described, about 70% of which belong to the class of Insects; nevertheless, it is estimated that the total number of Insect species may exceed three million. Calculating the number of living specimens of this Class is practically impossible, when we consider that, according to rough estimates, the total weight of all the Insects on Earth would far exceed that of all vertebrates.