Insect story

Insects are the dominant life-form on earth. Millions may exist in a single acre of land. About one million species have been described, and there may be as many as ten times that many yet to be identified. Of all creatures on earth, insects are the main consumers of plants. They also play a major role in the breakdown of plant and animal material and constitute a major food source for many other animals.
Insects are extraordinarily adaptable creatures, having evolved to live successfully in most environments on earth, including deserts and the Antarctic. The only place where insects are not commonly found is the oceans. If they are not physically equipped to live in a stressful environment, insects have adopted behaviors to avoid such stresses. Insects possess an amazing diversity in size, form, and behavior.
It is believed that insects are so successful because they have a protective shell or exoskeleton, they are small, and they can fly. Their small size and ability to fly permits escape from enemies and dispersal to new environments. Because they are small they require only small amounts of food and can exist in very small niches or spaces. In addition, insects can produce large numbers of offspring relatively quickly. Insect populations also possess considerable genetic diversity and a great potential for adaptation to different or changing environments. This makes them an especially formidable pest of crops, able to adapt to new plant varieties as they are developed or rapidly becoming resistant to insecticides.
Insects are directly beneficial to humans by producing honey, silk, wax, and other products. Indirectly, they are important as pollinators of crops, natural enemies of pests, scavengers, and food for other creatures. At the same time, insects are major pests of humans and domesticated animals because they destroy crops and vector diseases. In reality, less than one percent of insect species are pests, and only a few hundred of these are consistently a problem. In the context of agriculture, an insect is a pest if its presence or damage results in an economically important loss.
Some insect species have a single generation per season (univoltine), while others may have several (multivoltine). The striped cucumber beetle, for example, overwinters as an adult, emerges in the spring, and lays eggs near the roots of young cucurbit plants. The eggs hatch, producing larvae that emerge as adults later in the summer. These adults overwinter to start the cycle again the next year. In contrast, egg parasitoids like Trichogramma overwinter as immatures within the egg of their host. During the summer they may have several generations.
Insects adapt to many types of environmental conditions during their seasonal cycle. To survive the harsh winters, cucumber beetles enter a dormant state. While in this dormant state, metabolic activity is minimal and no reproduction or growth occurs. Dormancy can also occur at other times of the year when conditions may be stressful for the insect.
It is often better to consider insects as populations rather than individuals, especially within the context of an agroecosystem. Populations have attributes such as density (number per unit area), age distribution (proportion in each life stage), and birth and death rates.