"Jeff Layman" wrote in message
...
Mary Fisher wrote:
"Jeff Layman" wrote in message

That includes good invertebrates as well as bad.

Good? Bad?

Good/bad in terms of their effects on food crops.
Good: pollinators such as honey bees. Predators which eat "bad"
invertebrates such as ladybirds and hoverflies (eat aphids); ground
beetles (eat slugs). No doubt there are others.

Bad: see above. Aphids, slugs, snails, wireworms, cutworms, weevils.
Sadly the list is endless.

No list is endless.

Perhaps it would be possible to include those flatworms which eat
earthworms (but I haven't seen anything about them recently - weren't they
supposed to have killed off the UK earthworm population by now?).


If they disappeared from the earth tomorrow the ecosystem wouldn't
notice - other predators would take up the slack.

Like Man.

? If Man disappeared tomorrow it would probably be a good thing for the
ecosystem.

For some values of 'good'. From your point of view?

We do see the world as we are, not as it is.


But if bees disappeared, that's another thing altogether...

?

Other than plants pollinated by the wind and some other specific
pollinators (humming birds, butterflies, moths, bats), all the
bee-pollinated plants would eventually die off.

And so?

Most certainly, all our fruit would go, and so would a lot of the other
plants which feed us.

Ah, so Man is still the centre of your universe.

Mary