As a potential “insect apocalypse” looms, one etymologist is working to catalogue and discover caterpillars—creatures long overlooked by science—across the U.S.
The night of the squish, I hung around for a while to watch Wagner shoot and reshoot that day’s finds. He was wearing his usual field uniform—jeans, sneakers, a short-sleeved button-down shirt, and a cap printed with the logo of Caterpillar, Inc. He was so much bigger than his models that when I took a picture of him taking a picture of them it looked like a man photographing nothing.
In keeping with their variety, insects play a vital role in virtually every terrestrial ecosystem. Roughly three-quarters of the world’s flowering plants depend on insects for pollination. Insects are also crucial seed dispersers; many plants stud their seeds with tiny treats to entice ants to carry them off. And they’re key decomposers.
Around the time that Wagner turned sixty, in 2016, he started to think about retiring and, possibly, moving out West. But then another, much bigger ecological crisis intervened—what’s become known, perhaps prematurely, perhaps not, as the insect apocalypse. As the papers piled up, a counter-movement took shape. Some researchers argued that there was a bias toward doom. Studies that found no particular trend in insect numbers were less interesting than those that suggested a crisis, and therefore were less likely to get published. Other researchers pushed back. Even if insects were doing O.K. in some places, they said, the outlines of the problem were clear and the stakes too high to wait.
I first met Wagner not long after that session, at a Christmas party where I was also introduced to several giant cockroaches. The party was held in the entomology offices of the American Museum of Natural History. That evening, as we snacked on fried crickets, Wagner told me, “For the first time, I think people are really worried about ecosystem services and all the things insects do to sustain the planet.
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