Of all romances, annoying as they may be, the mating of lovebugs is probably one of the biggest nuisances. Last spring, I personally witnessed this spectacle when I took my little cousin and a few of her friends to our elementary school playground. As they laughed and ran around, my cousin brushed her hand against the slide, coming away with a crusty black and yellow goo. She screamed and called me over, asking if it was poisonous and whether she was going to die. Like a proper older cousin, I assured her of her impending death. Like a proper seven year old, she decided to ignore me and put her trust in her friends who also had no clue. After a few more screams, I revealed the truth.
As any Texan might have guessed, the goo was the remains of a crushed pair of mating lovebugs. Lovebugs, otherwise known as Plecia nearctica, are members of the marchfly family, and are named for their days long matings where the male and female are constantly coupled, even in flight. As adults, lovebugs are harmless small black flying insects with red thoraxes that feed on nectar. Lovebug larvae, on the other hand, are slate gray and live in the soil while feeding on decaying vegetation. They are widespread in Texas and have two mating flights in late spring and late summer when their numbers are such that they can seem almost like a black snow. In our case, they could often be found drifting about the school playground so slowly that kids would make a sport of catching and crushing them. Hence the goo. Apparently, their deaths themselves are a nuisance, since their bodies can become fairly acidic after being left outside for a day. If they die on a car’s surface, this acidity can produce etchings in the paint and also make them difficult to remove. Current advances in car paint technology have made this less of a problem, but lovebugs can still get caught in car radiators and on windshields. Our experience reflected this as the lovebugs’ bodies had become encrusted onto the playground paint and left little discolored marks everywhere.
Interestingly, due to their somewhat unknown life cycle and surprising migration to Florida and nearby states, there is an urban legend that love bugs were created in an experiment at the University of Florida. My cousin would have certainly believed it! However, of course only nature could create such insects. As Philip Koehler, an entomology professor at University of Florida stated if they had created them, “they would be orange and blue”.
Despite my knowledge of the lovebugs’ short lifespan and tendency to get killed anyway, I encouraged my cousin and her friends to learn about them rather than harm them. Lovebugs were an annoying, yet fun part of my childhood experience, and educational in that they got me interested in insects in general. They were also my first bug catching experience which has become useful in this very class. In the future, I hope that children will still get to see, catch, and scream at accidentally touching the lovebug goo.
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