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WHERE DO INSECTS OVERWINTER? PART #1
BY GEORGE EDGAR
While cleaning
up my garden a few years back, I thought about the many insects and
mites I saw in the summer and wondered, “Where are all the spider mites,
grasshoppers, lady bugs, praying mantis, squash vine borer, and cucumber
and squash bugs? How do they spend the winter?”
I e-mailed my
friend Jim Kalisch, in the Department of Entomology at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln and he helped me with websites that I could research.
Many are listed at the end of this article.
Insects have a
variety of methods for surviving the coldness of winter:
1.
Migration-Like humans, insects also have their “Snowbirds” that head south for
the winter and then return. The Monarch Butterfly, the Painted Lady
Butterfly, the Gulf Fritillary, and the Giant Swallowtail are the
foremost examples of this maneuver. Other pests such as leafhoppers,
black cutworm, fall armyworm, cucumber beetles, and milkweed bugs also
head south.
Most of the
insects mentioned reinvade the next year. But it is different
individuals that will return in the spring and early summer with the
help of southern winds.
2.
INVASION-“Most insects
stay here year around. They employ a variety of tactics for survival.
One is simply to move in with humans. Insects such as multicolored Asian
lady beetles (ladybugs), face flies,
cluster flies, elm leaf beetles, boxelder bugs, and clover mites
overwinter as adults in wall voids, attics and other out-of-the-way
places in homes and other structures.” (1) In nature, many will seek
shelter in leaf litter, rotten logs, or dense forest undergrowth.
3.
ACTIVATION- “Honeybees
have been studied during the winter and are found to remain
semi-active in hollow trees and hives through the generation of body
heat. The consumption of 30
pounds of stored honey during the winter months makes this possible.
Heat energy is produced by the oxidation of the honey, and
circulated throughout the
hive by the wing-fanning of worker bees.” (2)
4.
HIBERNATION-“This is
the strategy employed by most of our northern species to
avoid winter. However, ‘hibernation’ is really a concept that describes
mammal wintering. Insects that go dormant in winter enter a state called
‘diapause’. Their bodies respond to changes in daylength, temperature,
food quality and other environment cues”.
(3) References: (1)
“Where Do Bugs Go In Winter” by Don Janssen,
Extension Educator
for
(2)
“Where do Insects Go In the Winter?” Prepared by the Department
of
Systematic Biology, Entomology Section, National Museum of
Natural History, in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution.
(www.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/buginfo/winter.htm) (3) “Where Do All The Insects Go In The Winter?”
by Neil Carter,
Tender Fruit & Grape IPM Specialist, Ontario Ministry of
Agriculture,
Food, & Rural Affairs and Hannah Fraser, Entomology
Program
Lead (Hort)/OMAFRA
(www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/hort/news/
hortmatt/2006/01hrt06a5.htm) Copyright 2015 |