I know as humans our impulse is to “do something about it”, but I think insects are gonna be fine.
For example through most of Los Angeles, if you see an ant it is probably an Argentine ant (Linepithema humile). Over my son's life, the variety of native ants to be found near me has visibly declined.
Not everything is about climate change.
Take bees/pollinators. Another species could evolve or otherwise step in to fill the gap, but it could well result in many other plant and animal species also going extinct in the process.
Similar scenario with climate change. The earth will continue to exist and there will continue to be weather. But that weather could be a lot more inhospitable to our very narrow definition of habitable.
[0] https://tarheelants.com/pages/ant-queen-and-colony-adoption
I wish they were legal a decade ago when we were trying to figure out how to buy ant farms...
Are ants similar to bees in that there's one egg-laying "queen" that you have to gather, or can you just gather a collection of individuals from a colony?
Your kid probably already knows about this, but have him check out the YouTuber AntsCanada. I'm not particularly into ants but I find his videos fascinating.
Yes, most ants are similar to bees in that way. In fact ants and bees are very closely related. But a few kinds of ants (for example the invasive Argentine ants), can have multiple queens in a colony that cooperate with each other.
The reason for this rule is the ease with which ants become invasive species, and how much damage they can do.
But if it comes to ants, I'm willing to bet money that he knows it.
I remember being at a bug fair with him a few years back. There was a grad student with a display including some fossilized ants. My son came over, looked, identified the genus, began pointing out the identifying characteristics and named multiple related current species. The grad student's jaw dropped open. The only things that the grad student knew which my son didn't was how old the fossil was and where it was found.
And here is some fun trivia. If you look, between the thorax (where the legs grow) and the gaster (the bulb at the end), there is a very, very skinny petiole. The only food that can pass through that and keep the ant alive is high energy fluid. So a major problem for every species of ant is how to turn the world around into such a fluid so that they can eat it.
I'm familiar with US laws because I live under them.
If you want a real ant farm, you need to either collect ants locally, or buy ants in person from someone who did themselves. And you'd better known the rules if you want to cross state lines with your ants.
(Source, I have a teenager who loooves ants and knows everything about them. He now has multiple species of ants that he keeps.)