More than 75 percent of the world’s insect species are insufficiently protected when it comes to conservation areas around the globe, according to a recent new study.

From our favorites like bees and butterflies, to the lesser appreciated organisms such as wasps and mosquitoes, insects are facing threats such as climate change, and a myriad of other ills such as habitat loss and pesticide use.

Protected areas, also known as conservation areas, are clearly defined geographic spaces that are legally recognized and managed to achieve the long term conservation of nature.

The study was published last week in the journal One Earth, and argues that protected areas can support vulnerable insect populations, but only if their geographic ranges are specifically targeted.

A number of studies have shown that protected areas that target specific vertebrate — non-insect — populations are generally successful at safeguarding them from the impacts of human action, or inaction. Fewer studies, however, have been conducted on insect populations, which are generally not as prioritized in the world’s protected areas.

The problem, according to the researchers of the study, is that when they measured the geographic distribution of insect populations using global biodiversity data and maps of protected areas, they found that 76 percent of insect species were inadequately covered, and more than 1,800 species not covered at all.

More than 89,000 insect species were assessed in the study. The most underrepresented species, the researchers found, include critically endangered ones like the dinosaur ant of southern Australia, the crimson Hawaiian damselfly, and the harnessed tiger moth found in eastern North America.

“A lot of insect data come from protected areas, so we thought that the proportion of species covered by protected areas would be higher,” Shawan Chowdhury, a conservation biologist at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research and the lead author of the study, told Cell Press.

Read the full article about insects and climate change by Brett Marsh at Grist.