The Vampire Hunters? (LOVEBUGS) with Ellen Weatherford

So what bug did you select for us today? I wanted to talk about love bugs.

Are love bugs a real thing? Or is that just like a colloquial name? I guess I always assumed that it was something...

It is.

I mean, it is like a common name.

You know, it's kind of like a it's not exactly their scientific name, but love bugs are a distinct like that is recognized as like their own thing.

How familiar are you with love bugs? Have you ever seen them?

not that i know of so this is okay this is the problem people ask me if i've seen it and i'm like 100 familiar with it and i'm like i don't know i've never met this man in my

life because

i just don't know what that man looks like i don't know him

so i am from florida uh in florida is home now to these insects called love bugs, which are a type of fly.

So they're in the Diptera order.

So related to other flies and mosquitoes and things like that.

But they are very noticeable and identifiable because they have these black bodies with this bright red...

I'm going to have to double check to see, to remember my bug anatomy vocab.

I think it's the thorax.

Yeah.

So the thorax is like bright, bright red.

The rest of the body is black and they have pretty long legs too.

Um, so a pretty distinct, like visually when you see them, but even more than the distinctness of the individual love bug is that you will usually see them in pairs, um, like physically connected to each other so two love bugs will be joined at the butt facing in opposite directions and they just go about their life like that just conjoined in the middle um so that is usually obviously that makes a much bigger bug right it's like visually it's huge you're gonna see this thing flying through the air uh and also it's just so it weird looking you're like why are those two bugs stuck together in the middle like that

how long are

they stuck together they will be stuck together like that for up to three days oh my gosh okay which is like most of the adult life cycle

that's what i'm thinking i'm like how long can they possibly live like this you're talking about they're going about their business i'm like how much business could they have most i mean most animals are they're here we're we're um we're doing the business we need to conduct and then we're moving on we're splitting yeah and then we have

other things we need to do

i've got other chores to complete

well because you guys have probably talked about a lot of insects on this podcast who have this type of life cycle where you know the larva will live for a while like a long time like the larva will live for maybe like six like nine months ish sort of frame love bugs do not have a long life cycle like in every year is producing multiple generations of love bugs oh the turnaround's quick it's it's so fast so there's even like every year there's two different peak times of love bugs so there's like a late spring peak of love bugs and then there's a fall peak of love bugs because that's just how fast like the generations are are turning around So the larva will live for anywhere from like three to nine months, but then the adults will only live for like less than a week.