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Post by kemmer on Sept 26, 2016 1:00:16 GMT -5
Weird question here.
Every year, for 30+ years, during tomato season (August/September), when tomatoes are sitting all over my counter-tops and I'm freezing spaghetti sauce every three days, I've had lots of small, black flies in the kitchen. I call them fruit flies, but they aren't the fruit flies of my childhood.
Anyways, they do no damage. They don't bite. They hang around the compost pail-- sometimes produce maggots if I'm lazy about taking it out. No big woof.
This year, like, NONE! True, I don't love them, and I shouldn't be complaining. But, still... I do wonder about the demise of insect life. (I can drive from here to Cleveland in the summer, and not have to clean a mass of dead bugs off my windshield. That's just wrong.)
Anybody else seen a collapse in the population of these little, black "fruit flies"? Just curious.
(Related subjects: where went the Gypsy-Moth Apocalypse and the Stink-Bug takeover of the Earth?)
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Post by Evil Yoda on Sept 26, 2016 10:39:00 GMT -5
Farmers spray a lot of pesticides. They're supposed to do it in a way that minimizes drift, but not all of them are careful about that. Perhaps your garden was affected by that?
I try to avoid insecticides, but this year the Japanese beetles were devouring my roses and I had to resort to carbaryl. Nothing else controls them.
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Post by towsongirl on Sept 26, 2016 17:24:58 GMT -5
I read an article recently about bees dying because of pesticides used in lawn treatments, mosquito treatments. It could be that your fruit flies have been affected by that. I saw a fruit fly the other day near a half cut banana on the counter but I haven't seen very many come to think about it.
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Post by Evil Yoda on Sept 26, 2016 21:10:55 GMT -5
Despite what a lot of liberals seem to believe (that neo-nics are responsible), no one really knows for certain what causes colony collapse disorder in bees.
I read recently that some scientists are considering ways to kill mosquitoes, world-wide. Unbelievable that anyone would regard that as a good idea, regardless of how much pests they are. Throwing a spanner into an ecosystem like that is certain to result in unintended consequences.
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Post by kemmer on Sept 26, 2016 22:54:25 GMT -5
Yeah, I know about pesticide drift. I was just wondering if anyone else had noticed a significant drop in this particular bug, this year. Sometimes populations crash with no known cause, although after thirty years a cyclical thing doesn't seem likely. (Side note: rabbits are back! There were quite few back in the '80's, but not a single sighting for about 20 years.)
I do hope the PTB don't go after mosquitoes. Lots of birds and bats like that food source-- spiders, too. Then, there's the question of what other insects are killed alongside them. Not all cause problems for humans. When I was a small child in Cleveland, the "Canadian Soldiers" (mayflies of some sort, called "American Soldiers" on the other side of the lake) used to cover all available surfaces for days. I'm talking about not being able to walk on the sidewalk without squashing half-dozen of them with every step. All they did was breed, then lay their eggs in the water so their larvae would be fish food.
The year that everything (read: my car!) was covered with gypsy-moth caterpillar poop, the phoebes nesting on my porch-light raised three batches of chicks-- five in the group I saw leave the nest. I enjoyed watching them catch the moths. Nature seems to find a way to halt over-population.
Japanese beetles are the pits. I usually go out in the evening and pick them off-- drop them into a can of soapy water. Thankfully, I haven't had an infestation for years. (If I'm not misinformed, Japanese beetle larvae draw moles, a much larger problem for me. Nice that they're gone now, too.) I only resort to pesticides for cabbage worms. I probably should for squash beetles, but I can pick them off the zucchini (again, into the can of soapy water.) By the time they destroy the butternut squash vines, there are plenty of squash ready for harvesting-- and giving away.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2016 23:09:04 GMT -5
Despite what a lot of liberals seem to believe (that neo-nics are responsible), no one really knows for certain what causes colony collapse disorder in bees. I read recently that some scientists are considering ways to kill mosquitoes, world-wide. Unbelievable that anyone would regard that as a good idea, regardless of how much pests they are. Throwing a spanner into an ecosystem like that is certain to result in unintended consequences. Thirty years ago, we were spraying furiously for gypsy moths, but in the end, it wasn't the pesticides which stopped them--their colonies suddenly and ignominiously crashed. Once their populations became unsustainable in certain areas (largely due to a lack of preferred foliage), they were vulnerable to diseases caused by viruses, fungi and bacteria. I'm guessing it's much the same with bees in that something parasitic is infecting the colonies and thus drastically reducing their numbers. I have yet to figure out a single, intrinsic purpose for mosquitoes other than to spread disease and generally be obnoxious, but I agree that any attempt to wipe them out would likely be a bad idea. Their larvae, for example, is an important food source for fish and other aquatic animals. |
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Post by pahunter on Sept 27, 2016 7:22:24 GMT -5
So that's it kemmer sent all the rabbits to my back yard.
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Post by Evil Yoda on Sept 27, 2016 9:39:11 GMT -5
Another insect that was supposed to overrun us is the brown marmorated stink bug. I see them from time to time, but rarely in numbers. A few make it inside every year and die, just as do a few wasps. The other day, I saw one getting eaten by a large wheel bug, so there are things going after them. I have quite a few wheel bugs around me, and by this time of year they're usually the size of grasshoppers or maybe a little larger.
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Post by Ravenchamp on Sept 28, 2016 6:38:25 GMT -5
what happen to big cicada invasion predicted this past summer? Nothin!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2016 16:07:47 GMT -5
what happen to big cicada invasion predicted this past summer? Nothin! The 17-year brood won't emerge in this area until 2021. |
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Post by Ravenchamp on Sept 28, 2016 22:37:27 GMT -5
but they predicted these this summer
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Post by Evil Yoda on Oct 1, 2016 13:50:00 GMT -5
but they predicted these this summer No one predicted the return of the 17-year brood this summer. There are cicada broods every year - you can hear them when it gets hot. The 17 year brood is the big one that does a lot of damage to plants. |
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Post by microg on Oct 1, 2016 15:51:19 GMT -5
I love the 17 year cicadas. You can just pick them up and pet them. How cute!
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Post by pahunter on Oct 2, 2016 7:18:10 GMT -5
Good fish bait I'v even had carp take them.
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Post by Ravenchamp on Oct 2, 2016 13:24:01 GMT -5
Our local media did if fact tout these as 17 yr.
Someone fubared
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Post by rocketwolf on Oct 3, 2016 18:49:52 GMT -5
Despite what a lot of liberals seem to believe (that neo-nics are responsible), no one really knows for certain what causes colony collapse disorder in bees. I read recently that some scientists are considering ways to kill mosquitoes, world-wide. Unbelievable that anyone would regard that as a good idea, regardless of how much pests they are. Throwing a spanner into an ecosystem like that is certain to result in unintended consequences. --their colonies suddenly and ignominiously crashed. Once their populations became unsustainable in certain areas (largely due to a lack of preferred foliage), they were vulnerable to diseases caused by viruses, fungi and bacteria. I'm guessing it's much the same with bees in that something parasitic is infecting the colonies and thus drastically reducing their numbers. I have yet to figure out a single, intrinsic purpose for mosquitoes other than to spread disease and generally be obnoxious, but I agree that any attempt to wipe them out would likely be a bad idea. Their larvae, for example, is an important food source for fish and other aquatic animals. Actually it was the release of a fungus that was found to attack the Gypsy moth larva and worked better and spread on its on far faster that was predicted. A family of barn swallows can eat over 60,000 insects in a summer many of which will be adult mosquitoes. |
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Post by aboutwell on Oct 15, 2016 12:40:19 GMT -5
I read an article recently about bees dying because of pesticides used in lawn treatments, mosquito treatments. It could be that your fruit flies have been affected by that. I saw a fruit fly the other day near a half cut banana on the counter but I haven't seen very many come to think about it. Fruit flies deposit their eggs in the stems of bananas... I like to keep my bananas sealed up in those green plastic bags you can get in the produce department at the grocery store... and they won't emerge... be sure to separate them from each other before you seal them up... |
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Post by Evil Yoda on Oct 15, 2016 17:48:17 GMT -5
I believe bananas are one of the fruit that emit ethylene, which triggers ripening. I'd imagine this evolved to synchornize the ripening of the fruits in a bunch, so that those seeds have a greater chance of being spread by animals that eat the fruit. This means bananas in bags will ripen much faster than those not.
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