New Zealand Insects

New Zealand has many interesting insects and most of these are only found only here, including the world's heaviest insect, the giant weta. Insects are very important as they provide food for lizards, fish, bats, birds, and other insects. Insects pollinate plants, help decompose organic material into compounds that feed plants, and control populations of pest insects. We will also include terrestrial invertebrates (no bones) in this section for now. A few of the images on this page are exotic species.

Some invertebrates have evolved to rely on a single species, for example, the extinct huia (bird) had its own louse. That louse became extinct with the huia and was only discovered recently on the skins of extinct huia specimens. The huia was hunted by Maori and Europeans for its feathers. New Zealand's bat fly is dependent on our bats and all three species of our bats are now threatened with extinction. According to the New Zealand Threat Classification system lists (2005) New Zealand now has 943 species of terrestrial invertebrate threatened with extinction, and a further 1316 species are thought to be threatened but too little is known about them to classify them as such.

Scroll down for awesome photographs. Page three has the highest resolution images.