The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the Ecosystem
Caterpillars are a remarkable bellwether of environmental changes. The post The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the Ecosystem appeared first on Nautilus.
If you give a caterpillar a leaf, chances are he’s going to tell you about the state of the world.
This is what chemical ecologist Tara Massad has learned from collecting thousands of caterpillars in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. Her work is part of the Gorongosa Map of Life, an ambitious project to build a multi-dimensional map of interactions between species. Documenting which species make up the park—and how they are related—is the path to conserve them.
“Understanding the ecosystem and all its elements is a prerequisite
