I’m driving down the highway half listening to NPR in my car. “Florida Matters Live & Local” is on the air and Dr. Deby Cassill, an associate professor of biology at USF, is chatting about the role of love bugs in the ecosystem and how in the past they inflicted damage on our cars’ paint finishes.
We characterized them, she relates, as the bugs “people loved to hate”.
I’m listening with half an ear because I’ve heard most of that rhetoric before.
And then her voice escalates exuberantly as she switches topics – talking about how these love bugs reproduce. And THAT grabs my attention.
So I repeat: If you are male and think you have it tough in the sexual theatre of your life, think again. The poor male love bug has it a lot tougher than you.
His life can be summed up by:
ONE AND DONE.
AND THEN HE DIES.
In the picture above, the love bug looks like a 2-headed bug, but it is actually a male and a female joined together while mating.
Dr. Deby Cassill says these small insects, which are often seen flying in pairs, have two main goals in life:
Survival and Reproduction
“She’s got the job of making good eggs filled with lots of food,” Dr. Cassill remarked. “All she needs from the male is — I call them sperm missiles — the little sperm that diversifies her eggs and gives her a second copy of her DNA.”
The female is four times bigger than the male. The male, however, is equipped with fascinating equipment that compensates for his smaller size.
At the end of his abdomen, the male love bug has claspers. These claspers have jaws. When he mates with the female in the air (quite a feat!), the claspers open-up and he grabs the female’s abdomen and DOES NOT LET GO. Hence the picture of the “two headed” bug.
The female love bug flies; the male love bug is the passenger.
After the sperm transfer, the male still hangs on – functioning as a type of chastity belt – preventing the female from readily mating with other males – which, BTW, she is programmed to do.
She’s “a real cougar,” notes Dr. Cassill.
For the male, it is one and done. And then death.
The female love bug then needs to get rid of her partner so she can lay her eggs. She has some interesting equipment to do so: spurs on her back feet. It’s a very unromantic end to a sexual encounter.
However, the female love bug doesn’t fare much better. The female lays her eggs and then dies 3-5 days after.
In spite-of their very dramatic way of procreating, love bugs’ overall behavior is quite benign. They don’t bite or sting and they don’t carry disease.
While searching for ideal places to lay eggs, lovebugs are often found near busy streets and highways. According to Dr. Cassill, they are attracted to what she described as “stinky roads – the smells of oil, asphalt and organic matter.”
Prior to 2010, love bugs could damage the finishes of cars, but that has been rectified with a new kind of finish.
Love bugs rely on grass roots and dead leaves for food and reproduction. They lay the eggs in grass and dead leaves and by doing so produce manure – which is a wonderful fertilizer to help grow our grass.
I think I am very glad that I am not a male love bug.
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
