can art help save the insect world

For most people, insects are an annoyance - sometimes a frightening one. They are creatures to be kicked with an arm, stomped on with a foot or, in the extreme, wiped out with pesticides.

But Levon Biss, a macro-photographer who takes extreme close-ups of very small subjects, and curators and scientists at the American Museum of Natural History see the world of insects in a radically different way: essential to life on earth, endangered and, in too many cases, on the brink of extinction.

• They enable the fertilisation of many plants by transporting pollen,
  
• They consume decaying plant and animal matter, so they play a very important ecological role
  
• It is true that one third of all human crops are destroyed by insects, but the number of insect species responsible for this destruction is low