Bees Get All the Love. Won’t Someone Think of the Moths?

Look, we understand it – bees are awesome. As more people flock to cities in the coming decades, we will need more of these insects to pollinate urban green spaces, which provide fresh produce and the biomass that can cool a metropolis. But as cities use as many flowering species as possible to attract bees, they risk sidelining an underestimated champion of pollination: the humble moth.

If you haven’t been thinking about moths lately, it’s not your fault. Moths are inherently more difficult to study than bees because they are nocturnal. That means scientists have to work nights and use light traps to lure things in. “The whole reason they’re overlooked is because you see bees during the day but moths are obviously out at night,” says Emilie Ellis, a pollinator ecologist at the University of Sheffield. “I really think I can count six articles that have been about moths versus bees or moths versus anything.”