Ah, early fall. When thoughts here in South Mississippi turn to — what else? — scouring plastered lovebugs off the front of your car.
Last year I bought some specialty cleaner that’s supposed to get them off easier. I need to pull the bottle out of my garage again soon, lest the pair’s doomed love leave an eternal mark on my paint.
The insects, locked together as they fly, are truly everywhere this time of year, which led me to research them more closely.
And when I read this line from the University of Florida Department of Entomology, “Hot engines and the vibrations of automobiles apparently contribute to the attraction of lovebugs to highways,” I immediately thought it sounded like fodder for a country song. Maybe I could write a sequel to Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee,” I thought.
But that dream died quickly with the next sentence from our friends in the entomology department: “Callahan et al. (1985) reported that formaldehyde and heptaldehyde were the two most attractive components of diesel exhaust.”
Just no way to work “formaldehyde” deftly into an upbeat tune.
But it gave me another idea. I had simply been on the wrong genre: The lovebug is a tragic figure, whose romantic dreams end on the wrong end of a mass-equals-force-times-acceleration equation just as he gets his girl. He’s ripe for a sad, dramatic play in the vein of old Shakespeare.
Let me set the scene:
Two rival bug families, established on opposite sides of a well-traveled highway. In the warm air of late summer, a male laborer sets out for a day of, well, doing whatever love bugs do when not mating. He sets his gaze across the four-lane at a lovely young female. The alluring red spot on her thorax hypnotizes him, beckoning him across the road, consequences of their forbidden tryst thrown to the wind. Will this fearless couple end up smashed together on the front of a Ford? Or will it be the toxic diesel fumes that spell their demise?
You’ll have to read the play to find out.
I kid, of course, but there is some interesting information out there about “Plecia neartica.” It’s found along the Gulf from Florida down to Costa Rica. They’re not native to the U.S. and are incapable of stinging or biting.
During mating season, males begin hovering between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., according to research cited by the University of Florida, and position themselves into the wind just above ground level. Females crawl up plants and “take flight through the swarm of hovering males.” A male grabs the female, crashing them both to the ground. There they embrace, and the copulating pair starts its flight, feeding on nectar and pollen. This dating game ends in the morning, with little-to-no pairs leaving in the afternoon, but lovebugs stay connected for several days.
Alas, there’s no faithfulness, even in bugs named for love: The females can mate with multiple partners, and other males try to disrupt couples in transit.
The passion is also short-lived, literally: An individual’s lifespan is only about a week — if they don’t get hit by a car. That fate is troublesome both for lovebugs and drivers, because their acidic body chemistry can make them hard to clean off.
If she survives love’s embrace, the female lays about 350 eggs. Her larvae will feed on decomposing plants and leaves, which helps to break down the vegetation into organic matter that helps the soil.
Which is, in the end, something of a satisfying end for me to the lovebug’s tale. If love can’t last forever, at least your offspring can make a meaningful contribution to the world.
Reach Editor and Publisher Charlie Smith at csmith@columbianprogress.com.
