Insects play a crucial role in our lives. They act as pollinators and sources of nutrition for people and animals alike, thus forming a backbone of virtually all ecosystems on land. However, they can also transmit diseases and destroy farm crop yields, necessitating management and control of the behaviour of certain species. Current ways of dealing with insect pests mostly rely on chemical insecticides, affecting not only the target species with intended consequences, but often also further life forms with unintended consequences: In recent years, the use of chemical insecticides has been linked to global pollinator decline and decline of populations of other non-target organisms such as birds. In humans, the use of insecticides has been associated with elevated risks for developing cancer. Physical mechanisms that merely repel the target species without interruptions to other organisms could provide a non-toxic alternative to chemical insecticides. Various plants produce insect repellents based on wax micro- and nanostructures that exhibit specific mechanical and structural properties, such as finely tuned fracture behavior, thereby preventing insect attachment. As England and co-workers showed in 2016, surface roughness rather than surface chemistry essentially affects insect adhesion. This exemplifies the fact that for certain functionalities in living Nature, structure (physics) is often more important than specific materials (chemistry). This study aims to investigate the interaction between insects and wax structures found on a selection of plants common in Austria and whether the processes involved could be utilized to develop non -toxic insect repellents.