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Major Swarms Of Insects & Other Arthropods

My car was covered in ants this morning. It was just weird.
They've gone now, after I brushed them away several times throughout the day.
I'm wondering if they sensed the storm coming and were looking for shelter?
 
Now the locusts are taking over cities.

June 27 (UPI) -- Local officials in India advised residents near Delhi to be on alert and close their windows as a swarm of desert locusts entered the capital Saturday.

The swarm arrived in the neighboring city of Gurugram in Haryana state, as well as the South and West districts of Delhi. The government of Haryana issued a high alert, and Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai called for an emergency meeting.

"All district magistrates have been advised to remain on high alert and to cooperate with the district fire department personnel for spraying prescribed pesticides/insecticides," the a Delhi advisory said.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-...overtake-Indias-capital-region/4161593279908/
 
Now it's Brazil and Argentina.

Brazil and Argentina are monitoring the movements of a large swarm of locusts, which has been eating its way through crops in the region.

The insects, which can cover a distance of 150km (93 miles) in a day, have already travelled from Paraguay to Argentina and it is feared Brazil and Uruguay could be next.

Brazil has told farmers to be alert to the possible arrival of the locusts.

Kenya and India are also currently fighting locusts swarms.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-53221211
 
The mob molecule.

Locusts are usually harmless loners. But together, they become plagues.

When conditions are right, solitary locusts begin congregating and transmogrifying into their “gregarious” form, becoming a bigger, more aggressive eating machine. These groups can grow into ever-larger conglomerations, potentially hundreds of millions strong, that cross continents and destroy crops. A swarm of desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) the size of Rome consumes as much food in a day as all the people in Kenya. This year, East Africa is experiencing its worst locust plague in decades.

Now, scientists have pinpointed a compound emitted by congregating locusts that might explain how individuals of one widespread species overcome their innate aversion to socializing. The finding, described August 12 in Nature, could inform new ways of controlling or preventing locust swarms, potentially by attracting the insects with their own scents.

“It’s a significant and exciting study,” says Baldwyn Torto, a chemical ecologist at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, Kenya who wasn’t involved in the study. “We don’t have great ways of baiting locusts. This [compound] has potential.” ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/locust-swarms-pheromones-pest-control
 
Vid at link.

Kenya: A sustainable solution to locust swarms?


In 2020, East Africa experienced the worst locust swarms in 70 years.Billions of insects devoured crops and grazing land, threatening the livelihoods of millions of people in the Horn of Africa. But a Kenyan NGO, Bug Picture, has come up with a sustainable solution to the problem. It's training, and paying, affected communities to catch the locusts, which are then turned into animal feed and fertiliser.

Edited by Joe Inwood.

Published 13 hours ago

Section BBC News Subsection Africa

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-56187046
 
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Stephen Mudoga, 12, the son of a farmer, chases away a swarm of locusts on his farm as he returns home from school, at Elburgon, in Nakuru county, Kenya Wednesday, March 17, 2021. It's the beginning of the planting season in Kenya, but delayed rains have brought a small amount of optimism in the fight against the locusts, which pose an unprecedented risk to agriculture-based livelihoods and food security in the already fragile Horn of Africa region, as without rainfall the swarms will not breed.

FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/world-ne...-agriculture-d28a6e4b97cc1a35e69a8f7faea9c7ce
 

Recycle those cicada shells!

These miniature monster models are made from discarded cicada shells​


Eg25t29UcAAfk-J.jpeg

These monstrosities were originally shared by the Twitter account for the horror film podcast the Rotating Chair — which is fitting, because they are the stuff of awesome nightmares.

As far as I can tell, they are originally from Twitter user @ride_hero_, who is supposedly a student in Osaka, Japan and has been doing this for several years now. ...

https://boingboing.net/2021/05/26/t...ls-are-made-from-discarded-cicada-shells.html

 

Recycle those cicada shells!

These miniature monster models are made from discarded cicada shells​


Eg25t29UcAAfk-J.jpeg

These monstrosities were originally shared by the Twitter account for the horror film podcast the Rotating Chair — which is fitting, because they are the stuff of awesome nightmares.

As far as I can tell, they are originally from Twitter user @ride_hero_, who is supposedly a student in Osaka, Japan and has been doing this for several years now. ...

https://boingboing.net/2021/05/26/t...ls-are-made-from-discarded-cicada-shells.html

That's a nightmare, there.
 
Cicadas ground plane.

Reporters travelling to the United Kingdom ahead of President Joe Biden’s first overseas trip were delayed seven hours after their chartered plane was overrun by cicadas.

The Washington, DC, area is among the many parts of the country suffering under the swarm of Brood X, a large emergence of the loud 17-year insects that take to dive-bombing onto moving vehicles and unsuspecting passers-by.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40309703.html
 
As if record heat and drought weren't plague enough, some western US states are facing an upsurge in swarms of grasshoppers threatening crops. One side-effect of this development is an correspondingly worrisome upsurge in pesticide use.
Grasshoppers Are Descending on the West in Swarms

Thanks to extreme drought conditions and last year’s fairly large population of the dry climate–loving insect, concerningly dense swarms of grasshoppers are descending on the Western United States. The outbreak is causing concern amongst farmers across the West, from Utah to Wyoming to Montana, who are worried for their crops and livelihoods ...
FULL STORY: https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/grasshoppers-drought-farming-west-swarms.html
 
A major and mysterious mass swarming of slater bugs has been seen in eastern Australia.
Tremendous swarm of bugs crawls across the Outback

A wild video from near Quilpie, Australia, a town in Eastern Australia about 600 miles west of Brisbane, caught thousands of slater bugs moving across red dirt in the middle of the Australian Outback. The sheer number of creepy crawlies moving across the dirt almost made it look like the surface of the Earth itself was moving. ...

Slater bugs--also known as roly-polyies, woodlice or pill bugs--are multi-legged, land-living crustaceans that can be found in moist areas across much of the world, including the United States ...

"My chooks (chickens) love eating them if they get the chance, but I've never seen anything eating them when they are out in the open and on the move like this," said Wendy Sheehan, who posted the video to her Instagram page.

Sheehan theorized that a recent rainfall might be the reason that the seemingly endless stream of bugs decided to scamper across rural Australia. ...

"I don't know if it's as a result of the 5 millimeter [rain] we had last night, or in anticipation of rain coming, or some completely unrelated bug reason," Sheehan said. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/0...bugs-crawls-across-the-Outback/4981647949674/

VIDEO (Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/p/CbFUVrRglQc/
 
Caught this early 'Bird' just the other day lurking on one of my Rose bushes.
'Harlequin Ladybird,' it's got a bit more joined-up spots than I've normally come across, but it'll probably munch up some of those whitefly so I'm leaving it well alone. Earlier arrival than usual it seems.
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The gnats are notably numerous in the Windy City this year ...
Chicago's unusually large gnat swarm is 'natural,' experts say

Chicago residents have reported an unusually large swarm of gnats overtaking the city, but experts said its a natural phenomenon and nothing to be worried about. ...

The insects, also known as chironomid midges and non-biting flies, are common in the region during the springtime, but experts said this year's population is unusually large.

"This is a natural phenomenon," Allen Lawrance, associate curator of entomology at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, told NBC Chicago. "We'll see big emergences of them from time to time, but this year, we're definitely seeing a lot of them so it is a little bit unusually large, but it's not the end of the world times or anything like that."

Lawrence said researchers are not yet sure what caused this year's large swarm, but populations can be affected by factors including weather and viruses, as well as the presence of predators such as fish, dragonflies and migratory birds.

He said the large swarm is unlikely to last long, as gnats typically live for only 3-11 days. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/05/04/unusually-large-swarm-gnats-Chicago/2311651694693/
 

The World Hasn’t Seen Cicadas Like This Since 1803


The cicadas are coming — and if you’re in the Midwest or the Southeast, they will be more plentiful than ever. Or at least since the Louisiana Purchase.

The-World-Hasnt-Seen-Cicadas-Like-This-Since-1803-750x375.jpg


This spring, for the first time since 1803, two cicada groups known as Brood XIX, or the Great Southern Brood, and Brood XIII, or the Northern Illinois Brood, are set to appear at the same time, in what is known as a dual emergence.

The last time the Northern Illinois Brood’s 17-year cycle aligned with the Great Southern Brood’s 13-year period, Thomas Jefferson was president. After this spring, it’ll be another 221 years before the broods, which are geographically adjacent, appear together again.

the dual emergence would most likely result in more than one trillion cicadas appearing in the roughly 16-state area where the two broods are generally seen. Forested areas, including urban green spaces, will have higher numbers than will agricultural regions. To put that into perspective, one trillion cicadas, each of which are just over an inch long, would cover 15,782,828 miles if they were laid end-to-end. “That cicada train would reach to the moon and back 33 times.”

https://dnyuz.com/2024/01/19/the-world-hasnt-seen-cicadas-like-this-since-1803/

maximus otter
 
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