so I read the article and the story is both less and more insane than it sounds.

basically, there's been an ants' nest near a vent shaft of this abandoned Soviet bunker for decades. the nest spilled over into the bunker itself at some point once it was abandoned and there was no way for the ants to make their way back up to the nest, no queen but a constant supply of new colony members raining down from above, and no source of food in the bunker other than the corpses of their fellow ants.

fast forward to some scientists looking for bats that stumble on what's basically a post-apocalyptic ant society. they go "holy fuck" start studying, and observe that, all things considered, the ants still pretty much act like regular ants doing regular ant things.

fast forward some more, and the scientists feel like they have enough data from observing the colony as-is, so they decide to try an experiment. they put a little walkway between the bunker colony and the og colony in the vent shaft so the bunker colony members have the option of leaving and rejoining the og colony.

spoiler alert: every single ant in the bunker immediately nopes the fuck back to the colony in the vent shaft. within days the bunker is completely empty. the scientists leave the walkway in place so when more ants inevitably fall back down the vent shaft they can just climb back up instead of starting up the cycle anew.

tl;dr it's not "oh noes evil ants are on a rampage", it's "ants forced into a horrible situation to survive get to go home"

Okay I know why I should love wasps. Someone please tell me what mosquitos have going for them

Mosquitos are also pollinators! They're the primarily pollinator of some species of orchid, and they're a food source for other insects and animals.

mosquitoes are kinda . . . super duper crazy important for the environment. they serve as a direct food source for many animals, and as a key component in every food chain.

there’s a lot of other really interesting things they do for the environment, there was a great post here someone made about how they allow environments that have been overrun and trampled by megafauna to get a rest period so they can replenish (by annoying the megafauna so they leave lmao) i wish i knew where that post was.

also like mentioned above, pollinators!

nobody likes getting bitten, or catching something nasty from a little guy - but the vast majority of mosquito species not only don’t carry diseases at all, they don’t feed on blood or bite! (everyone hates to hear it but the little ankle biters are just as important as the others)

there’s not really a lot that can survive in gross little puddles of water like mosquitoes can, so they’re really great as this catch all food source that can just multiply like crazy in the nastiest most uninhabitable little places - their swarm is our environment’s benefit! 🦟

One of my posts on that went viral for a while so it might have been me!

Same with angry nests of yellowjackets, high densities of ticks, and stinging or thorny plants; if something makes an area undesirable for you to be in, even a tiny area, then it is a safe haven for other life of some sort. A tree full of bees is a tree safer from herbivores. The territory of a fire ant nest is paradise for various plants. Huge tangles of stickerbushes are a perfect place for little birds and things to hide.

Being painful, dangerous or annoying isnt just how a species can survive, but something its neighbors can rely on as well :)

[ID: a photo of two weevils next to a ruler. An arrow points to the smaller one which is labelled "lesser of two weevils" End ID]