A planet in peril and the insect muse

Humans are reshaping the planet in self-destructive ways. Public awareness is growing about our short-sighted folly, yet science and related media reports are not affecting policy change to forestall our impact. A multifaceted approach to communicating human-induced environmental destruction is critical, and art can affect our behavior by its power to evoke emotions. Artists often use insects in their works because of our intimate and varied relationship with this diverse, abundant lineage of animals. We surveyed work by 73 artists featuring insects or insect bodily products to gauge how extensively artists are addressing anthropogenic environmental distress, and what insects they are choosing as subjects in the process. Categories often cited as contributing to species extinction are (1) habitat destruction, (2) invasive species, (3) pollution, (4) human population, and (5) overharvesting. After adding insect-specific categories of (6) decline of insect pollinators and (7) the intentional modification or extermination of insects, we categorized our surveyed works, confirming categorizations with 53 of the living artists. Artists showed a bias addressing habitat destruction or climate change, and an underrepresentation of art related to several other important categories of environmental destruction. Artists favored Hymenoptera over all other insect orders, including orders containing more described species. Noting these misalignments, we see opportunities for artists to more extensively explore insect diversity and the harm we are causing, and for insect art to increasingly play a complementary role in affecting change in our destructive behavior.