Why Pollinators are Important and How to Help

This week is Pollinator Week! Pollinators are everywhere but are very important in Iowa with how much agriculture we have here. Pollinators are so important to the production of food that if they were to all go extinct, we wouldn’t have many of the foods we have today. With over 200,000 different species of pollinators, Read More »

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Eight forgotten pollinators

bee fly on a daffodil

Slugs to flies, moths to beetles — pollinators come in many shapes and sizes beyond butterflies and bees. These pollinators help one-third of human food sources to grow, but some have become so common that they are seen more like pests instead of beneficial insects, and some have even been eradicated to the point of Read More »

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Common moths in Iowa

white-lined sphinx moth

Moth balls. Moths flying out of old trunks in the attic. Moths escaping from bags of bird seed. Dusty, brown, uninteresting moths. The stereotypes about moths aren’t really true, because there are many moths in the world, and in Iowa, that are actually quite neat. Learn about a few that you will be able to Read More »

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Native Iowa butterflies and moths: Skippers and swallowtails

eastern swallowtail

More than 70 species of butterflies have been spotted in Dickinson County. And yet, the order Lepidoptera is made up of about 90 percent moths. So between butterflies and moths, there is a lot of fluttering action going on around us. (Learn the difference between butterflies and moths.) During the first Pollinator Education Series program, naturalist Ashley Read More »

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