Massive clouds of grasshoppers so large they show up on weather radar have inundated Las Vegas, swarming the bright casino lights, creating gooey messes on sidewalks and generally grossing everyone out.
Scientists attribute the infestation to abundant rainfall in the spring, which led to an abundance of green plants, which in turn sheltered an abundance of grasshopper offspring. As those plants dry out, the grasshoppers bug out in search of food.
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Arizona, which also had a wet spring, has so far escaped the swarms, though an uptick in insect activity has been reported in a few areas around the Valley.
“We have a demonstration garden. I was just out there and was noticing a large number of grasshoppers hopping around there,” said Michael Chamberland of the University of Arizona’s Maricopa County Cooperative Extension. “This is a recent occurrence, they weren’t there last week.”
Increases have also been seen in Mesa and other parts of the region, and it wouldn’t be unheard of for hordes of grasshoppers to materialize here.
Harmless, but intimidating
Carl Olson, a retired University of Arizona entomologist, said the pallid-wing grasshoppers are native to the Southwest and typically are on the move in search of food and places to lay their eggs in the soil in the spring.
He was surprised to see them on the move this late in the year, but “with this weather we’re having who can predict anything anymore? We have to start reassessing everything we knew.”
He said that like most bugs, grasshoppers migrate using celestial navigation, and the Las Vegas swarms were likely thrown off by the bright lights, “which totally confuses them.”
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He said it will be difficult for them to break the trap, and the result will be that most of them will wind up as prey for birds and lizards, and the rest will make “a mass graveyard in Vegas — they’re not going to be able to break away.”
He said grasshoppers tend to migrate from the south, so it’s doubtful that Arizona will see any fallout from the Las Vegas swarm. However, he said it’s possible that the bugs being seen in the Phoenix area are part of another migration from further south.
The pallid-wing grasshopper is harmless, he said, but people see large swarms and develop irrational fears.
Those swarms, however, can be intense.
Invasions of the past
In 1980, grasshoppers infested almost a million acres in Arizona with as many as 25 adult insects per square yard, a 50% increase over the year before, which had been the largest invasion in 20 years.
Then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt declared a state of emergency near Prescott in Yavapai County, and state officials responded by spraying large swaths of range land in seven Arizona counties with malathion to protect cattle forage.
Six years later, 175,000 acres in southeastern Arizona were hit with an infestation that counted up to 35 insects per square yard, and in 1989, a 59-year-old woman living near Young in Gila County was airlifted to a Mesa hospital with signs of pesticide poisoning after officials sprayed 4,000 acres with malathion to quell an infestation there. She later recovered.
Similar outbreaks occurred in the 2000s, even meriting a mention in an Arizona Diamondbacks story the Arizona Republic in 2009:
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“… the insects have invaded the confines of Chase Field, too. In short they are everywhere — from the playing field, the dugout, to the press box and stadium seats. So far, the grasshoppers have only slightly annoyed the players.”
‘A grasshopper-nado’
This week’s Las Vegas infestation prompted reminiscences on Facebook about invasions past.
“I remember a grasshopper invasion in Mesa in the 1970s. Couldn’t take a step without crunching,” Marie Dillon wrote.
Dillon said her family had just moved to Mesa, “so I sort of expected the grasshopper plague was an every year thing, but I remember only the one.”
Facebook friend Kari Gresko remembered the plague as well.
“That … was horrible! I remember cars slipping on bug guts on the road – grasshoppers in stores,” she replied. “Like a grasshopper-nado!”
Gresko said she wasn’t sure of the year, “maybe ’73 or ’74 — I just remember swarms so thick it was like a horror movie! We didn’t have a/c in the car but refused to open (the windows for fresh air because of the grasshoppers.”
John D’Anna is a reporter on the Arizona Republic/azcentral storytelling team. He prefers his grasshoppers chocolate covered. Reach him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @azgreenday.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
