Has any of you around the globe noticed...
 

...a distinctive drop in the insect population this season? Only today while riding home two bugs big enough to make my ears ring a bit banged into my helmet, those big beetles and hawkmoths that hurt your shoulder through a proper riding jacket are nowhere to be found. My car has been without wiper fluid for I don`t know a month cause I never remember to buy more since the windshield stays almost spotless. Just a bit weird... Normally when you ride at night here around these times you find yourself more in the need of a sharp scraper than a wet wipe to clear your visor, now I don`t even bother cleaning it after every ride.

Where the heck are all the bugs?!

Great observation Matti!

Insects respond directly to climate (temperature, solar insolation etc), very small changes daily add up to big changes over the developmental cycle of the insect. Generally insects require a set number of 'day degrees' to develop (not quite THAT simple though) - so the colder/more variable it is the less DD the insect receives per season slowing development, hence they don't splat on your helmet/windscreen when they 'usually' do.

I was working on just that issue with an aphid species (a little less damaging to health when riding) as part of my PhD.

Cheers, SB

The great and powerful SB has spoken....

and he, of all people here, would be the one that knows about bugs!

lol :icon_sultan:


Just don't ask me to remember how many 'anal hairs' there are on a Rhopalosiphon padi , some things are best forgotten :icon_deal:

Cheers, SB

Just what field of study do you have a PHD, entomology fetishes?

I am an Entomologist hamlin, graduated University of Adelaide 1986. Always worked in that field - or communications allied to ento projects. Started a PhD on aphid migration (modelling new quarantine breaches) in 2007 but am taking what is known in research circles as ummmmmmmmmmm............... Gentleman's Pace :D

Cheers, SB

I work in the IT/Computer Industry. So we both deal with plenty of bugs. :-)

The wife and I just drove from Lewistown, Montana to Vancouver, Washington. There were very few bugs on the windshield. Even the mosquitoes seem to have evaporated. It might be the lack of bees are the reason our neighbors apple trees have no apples.

Seb well the spring and the starting part of the summer has been somewhat cold so that could explain why there's so few of them. Those teeny tiny little flying dots that you mass-murder a whole flock at a time while riding through at night time we do have but even mosquito count is surprisingly low this year.

What makes it even more weird is that the apple tree in our front yard is creeking under the weight of the apples in it even though it's shedding them off like a sheepdog in springtime! Now that I think of it I do not remember seeing a single wasp the whole summer and very few bees either.

Plenty of bugs here in the Southeast. Be happy to share some with you less fortunate...