When someone hears the word niche usually they think of a woodpecker eating grubs in a tree or a bobcat eating rabbits (The woodpecker controls the beetle population and the bobcat controls rabbit populations). But most people never think of the animals that do most of the behind-the-scenes work. Termites for example (though a homeowners worst nightmare) actually play an important role in the environment; removing dead trees since they are one of the few animals that can digest cellulose directly, or the European honey bee one of the most beneficial insects, in that it pollinates eight million dollars worth of crops annually.

Facts

- There is no such thing as a “bad” bug. The insects are only considered this because they have established a niche where they use our crops to reproduce or eat.
- For every niche there is another that depends upon it. Take aphids for example they feed on the plant’s sap making it wilt and the leaves yellow, but many insects such as the ladybug rely on the aphid as a food source, if all aphids were destroyed the ladybug would thus be without a niche and either take over a new niche maybe throwing other niches off, or starve.
- Sometimes the smallest animal is the biggest player. Look at parasitic wasps; they are the smallest animals in the world some only one to two millimeters long, but they lay their eggs on pests such as caterpillars or grubs and when they hatch eat them.

http://www.ent.iastate.edu/pest/cornborer/