Reading an interview that actually focuses on the interviewed was refreshing. Question, response, question, response. Too many of the articles I've read lately, especially the ones about insect decline, intersperse the dialogue with distracting descriptions. Perhaps this is what you have to do when you don't have as well-spoken a subject as Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson seems to be.

Most interesting thing I learned: Meal worms eat plastic.

Especially since they don't need us at all...

> Four billion years from now, the increase in the Earth's surface temperature will cause a runaway greenhouse effect, heating the surface enough to melt it. By that point, all life on the Earth will be extinct.

4 billion years from now they are going to need our planet colonizing technology to get out. ;)

But, until then, they will be doing even better without us.

In 4 billion years they may well have evolved intelligence and have their own spacecraft.

Why stop there, they may have become spacecraft.

You're right, I'm pretty sure Zerglings are descended from insects.

To be fair, this can be said for pretty much anything that isn't domesticated.

...and in general of most things that have been around longer, or are biologically simpler (a non-perfect hint being plain size).

Huge organisms like humans built on the biological infrastructure available, and are thus to some degree dependent on what came before them.

Having said that - people are now the evolutionary vehicle for memes, which are far faster to evolve than lowly genes. It's quite plausible people would not go extinct due to that adaptability even if global warming devastated the planet beyond the worst current projections and the vast majority of insects went extinct (at a realistic pace, not 'all invertebrates instantly'). But "not going extinct" is a far cry from "comfortably thriving". Aiming for survival seems like a bad idea to me.

Who cares if we absolutely need (most) insects - we definitely want them.

I often think that if we had a way to speak to insects and animals, we'd be in heaven. They can do so much.

They speak to us in their own way. Humans don't always listen.

very true, the more modern, the less ready to listen we are

They don't play it up, but Findhorn was established by people communicating with and working under the guidance of natural intelligences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Findhorn_Ecovillage

This might sound far-fetched but science is catching up.

Micheal Levin is showing that thought and communication happen "outside the nervous system": "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698

And we are learning that living things are literally interconnected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network

My understanding is that many of the chemicals used in this "Wood Wide Web" also appear in humans as hormones and neurotransmitters.

We know evolution can make intelligence because it made us. My own dabbling in evolving systems leads me to believe that we should expect intelligence to be ambient. Gregory Bateson basically identifies mind with evolution ("Steps to an Ecology of Mind", etc.) while Stephen Wolfram publishes his tome ("A New Kind of Science") about the ubiquity of computation in natural systems.