Study Tracks Migratory Patterns of Flying Bugs

Flying bugs migrate in numbers over 3 trillion each year in England.

Insects capable of flight also migrate around the world depending the season, similar to birds. However, until now, not much was known regarding their numbers since they are hard to spot and count. Thanks to a new study, south-central England is the site where over 3 trillion flying bugs pass through.

The study which offered a rough approximation of the number of migratory flying bugs across this area in England was published in the journal Science, by a team of researchers led by Jason Chapman, a University of Exeter entomologist.

Chapman states that scientists mostly ignore the migratory patterns of insects, except that of the monarch butterfly, as they focus on more charismatic birds such as the Arctic tern, and others. However, flying bugs deserve being properly studied due to their immense potential of having either a positive or negative impact on the environment.

Chapman also went on to say that due to England’s relatively cold and damp climate, repeating the experiment in other regions of the world would very likely exceed the 3 trillion number of flying bugs found to travel through England.

For their study, the researchers monitored the seasonal migratory patterns of various insects such as the marmalade hoverfly among others. Flying bugs can be especially hard to count, due to their size and the altitudes they fly at. As such, Chapman and his colleagues had to resort to a number of specialized tools like narrow beams of radar which were pointed to the sky to spot bigger insects while using nets attached on small blimps to sample the smaller insects which fly at lower altitudes.

Besides offering an approximate number of insects that migrate throughout the south-central part of England, the researchers also discovered that migration mostly happens during daytime. Noting the lack of similar studies for other regions in the world, Chapman hopes to eventually see an increased interest in the migratory patterns of insects around the planet, as they carry both diseases as well as nutrients with them.

The study provides important data to scientists interest in learning how diseases can appear in regions, even without humans transporting them.

What do you think about the migratory patterns of flying bugs across England? Are you surprised at a number of insects?

Image source: Pixabay

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Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.