(gentle music) - [Teacher] Can you find a crack or a line that you could trace with your finger on the mountains?

Can anyone see a ridge?

- Yeah.

- [Teacher] Ooh, trace that ridge with your finger.

What do you think is inside those cracks and ridges?

- There's moss and some bugs in the cracks and ridges.

- [Teacher] Thumbs up if you agree that there might be some insects up there.

- [Narrator] Where do you think animals live in these mountains?

Do they live in the forest in the Alpine meadows, like a black bear?

Are they tiny enough to live on the underside of a leaf, like an insect?

Let's explore where these creatures live.

(cheerful music) Insect habitats on this episode of "Nature WY".

The place where you live is your habitat.

It has all the things you need, like food, water and a place to rest out of the weather.

You may share your habitat with insects but most need to live outside.

(thunder rumbling) That's where they find their special foods, water and shelter.

- What are some things that insects need?

- Insects need food.

- Awesome.

What kinds of foods do you think they need?

- [Kid 1] Seeds?

- Maybe.

What do you think?

- [Girl] Nectar?

- Nectar, absolutely.

What else do they need for food?

- [Kid 2] Maybe they need pollen.

- Okay.

Maybe they need pollen.

- Trash?

- And trash.

I'm gonna put that on here for food.

They eat any organic rotting material they can find.

- [Narrator] Some insects are not picky eaters.

Just like you, they are generalists, eating all sorts of delicious foods.

Others are really picky eaters.

We call them specialists.

If you were a specialist, you would eat one thing like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all day long or only carrots and nothing but carrots.

Do you think you would get tired of eating the same thing every day?

Well, specialist insects don't mind it at all.

Specialists can only live where they can find their special food, like a caterpillar that eats leaves from only one kind of plant.

But insects that are generalists can live in many places.

And it's not just food.

Living creatures are specialized in all sorts of ways from what they eat to where and how they live.

- What else do they need?

- [Kid 3] Water.

- Water, absolutely.

- They need shelter.

- Shelter.

Ooh, that's gonna mean something different for different types of insects.

Where might you go if you needed a little place to rest or to hide from a predator?

What do you think?

- [Narrator] And as an insect changes into each life stage, like a caterpillar to a pupa to a butterfly, it may need different foods to eat or different places to rest.

(pleasant music) What kind of insects do you think might live in this habitat?

Not all lawns are the same.

There are lawns with nothing but blades of carefully cut grass.

And there are lawns with flowers that some would call weeds.

- Are dandelions flowers or weeds?

My dad tells me they're weeds and you kill them if weeds.

- You know what?

It depends on who you talk to.

- But other people like, you and the teachers they're saying they're flowers and it's confusing me.

- It is confusing.

You know what?

Let me give an example.

People who are beekeepers, who raise bees, they want the dandelions around.

They're not a weed to them.

- [Narrator] And it's not just honey bees that use dandelions for food.

So many insects do, as they sip nectar and collect pollen.

- Looking around, I see flat grass, so pretty low to the ground.

And I see really tall trees.

So there's not a lot in between.

We don't have a lot of tall grasses.

We don't have a lot of bushes.

We don't have a lot of flowering plants here.

So we're not gonna find those creatures that live in the in between areas.

We're only gonna find things that live in the grass or things that live in the trees.

That's pretty much it.

So we're gonna cross our fingers so we can find a place with some flowers, because that's where we're gonna see a lot of really cool insects.

How is this space different than what we already saw?

What do you think?

- Over there, back at the first place, when we were trying to collect bugs by hand, the grass was dying and not as green.

And there are a lot more flowers here.

- [Kid 4] The more flowers, the more butterflies up here.

- Yes.

Everybody just turn your head, point to a flower.

Where do you see a flower here?

Okay.

Now, point to a different kind of flower.

Point to a different kind of flower.

So if I were a butterfly and I eat nectar, I have to have flowers.

Do you guys see some kind of in between plants?

So look at this.

So it's not that really low to the ground, but it's not a huge bush.

So this is gonna support a different kind of insect than like right here at the grass level.

What else, Bectin?

- The ground's not perfectly flat.

- Ooh.

The ground is not perfectly flat.

Exactly.

We have lots of hills and rocks and all sorts of changes in height.

Very good.

We're seeing all kinds of stuff here that we didn't see at the lawn at all.

- [Narrator] Can you find your own habitats to compare?

Find a flat grassy lawn and compare it to a wilder place?

Are there places for insects to hide in crevices or under rocks?

Could a butterfly or a bee find some nectar to sip?

How many differences can you spy?

- I caught one.

- [Narrator] For instructions on how to compare habitats, visit www.wyomingpbs.org/naturewy.

Come join science kids and us at Wyoming, PBS, and head outside to make your own habitat comparisons in Wyoming.

Thanks for watching.