Insect invasion: Making a bee-line for an explanation

While faculty and students alike embraced recent warm temperatures, such pleasant weather apparently brought with it an invasion of microscopic proportions.

Insects, it seems, are everywhere.

Anyone who has ventured outside or flung open the windows within the past couple of weeks likely has been involved in some sort of unpleasant insect encounter. Whether they be brazen — but unwelcome — house guests or even feisty pant-leg intruders, hornets, wasps, bees, lady bugs and mosquitoes are but a few of the insect species making their presence known on campus.

According to Robert Kent, a biologist at the New Jersey Environmental Protection Department, the increased number of insects — and mosquitoes in particular — results from a "significant amount of rainfall and moisture this year."

Moist conditions during the summer not only resulted in an unusually large mosquito population, said Kent, but also led to a general increase in floral growth throughout the New Jersey countryside. An abundance of flowering plants, in turn, gave rise to augmented numbers of pollen-feeding insect species such as bees.

Kent also said in an interview yesterday that he believes people tend to take more notice of insects in the fall because of the changing weather conditions. It is a commonly held misconception that cold weather spells immediate doom for insects, he noted.

"If all mosquitoes died in the winter," he pointed out dryly, "wouldn't the mosquito [as a species] be extinct?"

Yet, the question remains why bugs seem to have developed an insatiable interest in the contents of students' dorm rooms.

Barbara Bromley, a Mercer County horticulturist, said in an interview yesterday that the reason is actually quite simple.

Wasp populations, for example, start increasing in number during May and reach their peak in August. When temperatures drop in the fall, male wasps — needed only for their reproductive abilities during the summer months — enter the final stages of their lives.

During this time, and especially in the cooler hours of the day, dying males tire easily and look for warm, comfortable places to rest. Invariably, they are attracted to the heat emanating from open windows or, as Bromley joked, "one of your eating clubs."

Like wasps, yellow jackets and mud daubers — two hornet-like species — have good reason to be living in and around campus buildings. Yellow jackets, Bromley said, nest primarily in eaves troughs, and mud daubers lay their eggs in small "mud tubes" burrowed in cement foundations and between bricks.

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In addition, a particular species of lady bug called the Asian Lady Beetle — a species which is not native to New Jersey but migrated north from Louisiana — has recently become a problem in the Princeton area.

In its natural habitat in Asia, Bromley explained, this type of lady bug spends the winter hibernating in cliffs high above the ground. Unfortunately for these foreign visitors, the closest thing to a cliff is the stony facade of a residential college.

When asked to comment on the visible abundance of caterpillars, ants and other such creatures on the walkways and lawns around campus, Bromley offered another simple, almost self-evident, observation.

Bugs, like the rest of the University community, have been out enjoying the blue skies and unseasonably warm weather. In reality, Bromley said she believes there are not necessarily more insects than normal, but rather people have been spending more time outside this fall.

Bromley offered a bit of advice on how to handle a male wasp languishing on the doorstep or a rock-climbing Asian beetle resting on the window sill.

"Whatever you do, don't hit it!" she warned. "But," she continued, "hairspray works nicely."