Where Do Bugs Go In The Winter?

As the temperatures drop outside, I have noticed more bugs trying to make our home their "winter home". No, it's not a coincidence if you start to see more bugs around your house starting in the fall. These bugs are looking for a place to stay warm over these freezing cold months that are considered winter. I found out that bugs have many different ways of surviving the winter.

Some insects will actually migrate (fly or move) to warmer climates. One insect that migrates, is the Monarch Butterfly. This butterfly will actually fly about 2,000 miles from the areas that it lives in the summer to the areas it lives in the winter time! That's one LONG journey! Other insects also migrate for the winter, such as a few other butterflies and some dragonflies.

Other insects like to stick together in order to benefit from the body heat from their other insect friends. Honeybees like to huddle together so they can keep warm when it gets colder. Can you imagine the buzzing sound that huddle would make? Ants and termites like to dig way deep down into the ground to get below the freeze line. Because there are so many of them, they can stay warm and they have enough food to last them throughout the winter months. I wonder how they store all that food?

One of the most interesting things I found out is that some insects will actually use a type of "antifreeze" that their bodies make in order to stay alive throughout the winter. It's not the type of antifreeze a person uses in a car, but it works in a similar way! The insects actually make glycerol, which is a substance that helps to make it harder for the fluids surrounding the cells to freeze. That way the insect itself doesn't freeze completely through. A snow flea produces this antifreeze, along with certain beetles and caterpillars.

The last two ways that bugs survive the winter are types of a hibernation of sorts. One type is called Torpor which is a way of sleeping that makes the insect completely unable to move. This is temporary and will last while temperatures are coldest at night and as the day warms up, the insect comes out of torpor. The other type is called Diapause. During diapause, the insect can stay completely still for a long period of time. That's what makes it different from Torpor. During diapause, insects can be in any stage of their development. Some insects may be in the larvae stage, while others are full-grown adults!  The Praying Mantis and the Wooly Bear Caterpillars use diapause while a type of cricket that lives in New Zealand will use torpor. Either way, the insects get to sleep right through the cold! I wish I could do that sometimes!

I guess that there are more ways for bugs to survive the winter than to just come into my house! While we may have friends over at times during the winter, I most definitely have NOT sent out invitations to the insects! So they will need to find another place to stay.

Cheryl

Sources: About.com - http://insects.about.com/od/adaptations/p/wintersurvival.htm
nytimes.com - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/science/19creatures.html?_r=0

New Adventures in Your Own Backyard

Have you ever walked out in your backyard, or down your street, or around your block, and discovered a new bug or plant? Did you ever wonder why certain things happen in nature? I sure have! My family and I love to explore our surroundings and usually will find some new or odd thing that we have not seen before! Luckily, in this day and age, we have the internet at our fingertips to help us figure out some of these perplexing things! (If you are EXTREMELY lucky, like we are, you also have neighbors who are something like a walking and talking Wikipedia about all things in nature and they will share their knowledge with you!)

Whenever my kids are outside, they are searching for some type of bug. We have discovered many, many bugs in our backyard. We have been fortunate enough to see a horned tomato worm (that had been stung by a parasitic wasp that laid its eggs inside the unfortunate worm), a praying mantis, cicadas, soldier beetles, caterpillars, butterflies, moths, bees, hornets, paper wasps (and their huge nest!) grasshoppers, crickets, pill bugs, box elder bugs, numerous spiders, an especially creepy, green-fanged, hairy jumping spider (who built his home in our mailbox no less!) and many, many more bugs than I can even mention!  In our house, we can't just find a bug and not learn more about it. We get pretty curious when we see these little creatures crawling and flying around, so we head over to our neighbors, or to the internet to check it out.

In this blog, I hope to be able to share some of the awesome things we have discovered over the years. Maybe it will get you searching your own backyard too! One thing that we have learned is that the backyard has many treasures just waiting to be found! The more you get to know who and what shares your environment, the more you will appreciate the beauty of the world around you. Despite those crazy green fangs (and me not being too fond of spiders), that jumping spider was pretty amazing! We ended up taking him safely out of our mailbox and putting him into one of our many bug catchers, and taking him for a walk down our street. Yes, although he was amazing, we did not want him to come back to his mailbox home. So, we took him to live in the very nice, peaceful field that is at the end of our block. We hope he was able to find a nice home that didn't entail scaring a postal carrier half-to-death!

As I go along in this new adventure of blogging, I hope you will join me in learning. Remember that nature doesn't stop in the fall and winter (although a lot of it may hibernate), so I plan on finding some pretty fun and interesting things to post for you all during these colder months! If you ever have any things that you question from your own backyard, please feel free to share them with me. I love to learn about the world around us, but especially those things I can find in my own backyard adventures!

Cheryl