What accounts for the high rate of succes of insects?

Question

this question is from a field biology class

Answer 1

This is an easy question. The success of insects comes primarily from four things: many offspring, small size, variety of diet, and mobility.

Insects are small so they don't need a lot of food to live on. So, you can easily have lots of insects as opposed to horses or bears. Insect are also cold blooded so they don't burn extra calories to maintain body temperature as birds and mammals do. Insects are also highly prolific and can have dozens to thousands of offspring. Therefore, it is easier for say Japanese Beetles to multiply quickly and become pests than squirrels. Mice reproduce faster than dogs or cats but not nearly as quickly as insects. Likewise, most insects have a rapid life cycle and go from egg to adult in a few months. Freshly hatched insects care for themselves but this is also true in most fish, reptiles, and amphibians.

Insects have adapted to eat a wide variety of food. This ranges all the way from wood which is inedible to most animals to plants that are toxic like milkweed to ordinary plants and other insects.
Finally, insects are highly mobile as most insects can fly. This makes it easy for them to seek out new sources of food and spread to other areas.

Answer 2

Specialization

Insects are the most numerous and widely spread creatures on the planet because they find a niche in the ecology and exploit it. Do you know any other animals that thrive on waste, besides the microscopic ones? Sure seagulls scavenge out of landfills and vultures eat carrion. But, only the fly lays its young on a pile of rotten organic matter so that their young can eat that matter and thrive.

Look at all their specialized mouthparts, their eyes developed to see a wide field of motion, and where they live. Lobsters and crabs are just better developed insects and sea cucumbers are better developed worms.

Then look at how resilient insects are. You can kill a few ants, or a hundred; you can even smash the nest. But, as long as the queen is alive the ants will quickly make up the loses and rebuild. The same is true with bees, and termites. Cockroaches are resistant to radiation. It has often been said that they will be the principle survivors of a nuclear war.

When the asteroid collision killed off the dinosaurs (the KT event) the insects could burrow underground, or walk on water, or even fly to where the conditions were better and thrive.

The first life forms on the land were plants, the second were insects and they have been thriving ever since.

Answer 3

Specialized feeding structures and specialized diet. Rapid reproduction rate. Laying hundreds of eggs at once to insure some survive. Quick results for genetic mutations with an advantage to be passed to new generations.

Answer 4

variation. they adapt to different environments because there are so frikin many of them