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Lovebug (Plecia nearctica)

Distribution: Native to Central America and the Southeastern USA (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas). Most common in Texas and Louisiana.

Habitat: Can be found in almost all habitats, but most common in grassy areas; most common around fresh-cut lawns, animal pastures and areas with decaying vegetation. Found at altitudes of over 450 metres.

Diet: Larvae feed on decaying vegetation; adults feed on the nectar of plants such as sweet clover, goldenrod and Brazilian pepper.

Description: This insect is called the lovebug because mated pairs often stay together for days at a time during and after mating, with flights of mating lovebugs sometimes numbering into the millions. These flights can be quite a nuisance to drivers, as they easily splatter onto windshields and hoods at highway speeds. The acidic body chemistry of dead bugs, left for even just a handful of hours, makes them incredibly difficult to scrape off car parts; what's more, they also have a tendency to cause pits in automotive paint when left untouched for too long, or can cause radiators to overheat. Because they're attracted to fresh paint, lovebug corpses are also a common sight in the dried paint on buildings.

There is many myths surrounding lovebugs, perhaps due to how common they are. One myth claims that these insects were genetically engineered by the University of Florida in order to control mosquito populations (disregarding the fact that they're herbivorous, and thus would make poor pest control!). Another myth claims that lovebugs escaped from the University of Florida after being transported there by scientists; while their original range includes only Louisiana and Mississippi, populations naturally spread north- and southward. For some reason, this insect has many University of Florida-related conspiracies!

Images by Judy Gallagher and Chris Rorabaugh.

I hope everyone understands, when I say “most endangered habitat on earth”, I mean temperate grasslands.

They’re more endangered than tropical rainforests, coral reefs, the arctic tundra, all of those go-to environments that get more of the spotlight.

Where I live, maybe 25% of the prairie remains in a natural state and that number is dropping. Even these fragments are mostly missing the keystone species that maintain their health, like bison, wolves, and prairie dogs. I know this is the case for other grasslands like the pampas and steppe as well. Vast lands empty of many species that used to call them home.

If you live on temperate grasslands, hold onto them tight, because they’ve been exploited like no other land and most people don’t even know how far the devastation goes.

please please pleaseeee listen to this post and learn the value of temperate grasslands. it makes me very sad that not only have these landscapes been destroyed by colonizers, but even most of the people who live there now don’t see their value. when i say i love midwestern landscapes, people call me crazy just because they’ve never seen the beauty of the tallgrass prairie :(

i think most people don't know that they're a type of habitat at all; people associate "flat land covered in grass" with farm fields during the off season, or abandoned lots that have been allowed to overgrow. places humans "won't let" return to their "natural state": that being covered in trees, or a swamp, or some other "recognizable" kind of habitat.

but... the natural state of a good third of the united states is, in fact, grassy prairies.

and maybe they don't look like much, compared to a tropical rainforest or the african savannah...

... but they built our nation, almost literally. the US's western expansion was fueled and fed by the incredibly rich soil of the mature tallgrass and mixed grass prairies the colonists settled on. they cleared the grass and killed the animals and chased out the native people, then turned some 90% of middle america into farmland. and now the prairies are almost totally extinct.

it's not all despair though! there are lots of ecologists who recognize the importance of the american prairies to the overall health of the planet! and prairie restoration projects have been making slow but steady progress, both in protecting the fragments of mature prairie ecosystem that remain, and rebuilding the prairies using those untouched remains as a guide.