Little Insects on the Prairie

Almost everyone has read or heard a story that begins with, "Once upon a time." That phrase is often used to introduce a fable or a tale with its origins in bygone days. For example, "The Story of the Three Bears" begins, "Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks."

Once upon a time in the Midwestern United States there existed a major ecosystem - the tallgrass prairie. It covered some 142 million acres from western Indiana through Illinois and Iowa to the eastern parts of
Nebraska and Kansas.

The first Europeans to see the tallgrass prairie called it a treeless plain and generally did not perceive the land to be of much value. Some of the first farmers agreed, and in the words of one Illinois settler, "The land here is the worst I have seen since I left the banks of the Ohio." Indeed, Thomas Jefferson acquired most of this area for the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase for three cents an acre. <Read More>