Counting the Clean-Up Crew: teacher key

Bugs That Clean Up, grade 7 edition, written for 7th grade. Some bugs on the clean-up crew are not insects, and some numbers about them are huge. See how scientists sorted the crew and tested what it does.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. Pill bugs are more closely related to which animals?
   • Beetles
   • Crabs and shrimp (answer)
   • Termites
2. Which group of dung beetles drags dung underground?
   • Dwellers
   • Rollers
   • Tunnellers (answer)
3. What did the caged dung pats in South Dakota show?
   • Insects do real work breaking dung down (answer)
   • Dung breaks down just as fast with no insects
   • Beetles only live in cages
4. Where do all fungus-farming ants live?
   • Europe and Asia
   • The New World, mostly in the tropics of Central and South America (answer)
   • Africa and Australia
5. A teaspoon of healthy soil can hold more living things than what?
   • Leaves on a tree
   • Cows in a field
   • People on Earth (answer)

Words

• crustaceans: crab-like animals
• tunnellers: diggers of tunnels
• protists: tiny one-celled life
• larvae: young bugs
• compost: rotted plant mix