Bugging Out
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT: Insects and the Making of the Modern World
BY EDWARD D. MELILLO
Knopf, 272 pp., $27.95
T WAS A BRILLIANT BIT of branding a few years ago, when scientists began warning of an “insect apocalypse” or “insect armageddon.” As a rule, very few people care about or pay attention to insects, but the idea that insect populations were crashing catastrophically, and that you could tell by simply comparing how few insects were spattering against your windshield now compared with, say, in the 1990s, caught the public’s attention. Save the insects! people pleaded. We need them to pollinate our crops, to feed the birds, frogs, and other small vertebrates we admire, to help recycle waste, and to perform other essential tasks taking place outside the walls of our homes, within which, admittedly, we don’t want insects at
