TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) – They’re invading our sidewalks, homes, cars, trees and just about everything. It’s the annual return of the mayflies and the ones you’ve seen flying around just came inland Monday.
“They just stick on me and they get like, really annoying.” said 6-year-old Logan Essex, who has been seeing an influx of mayflies.
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Most people feel this way about mayflies and these flying insects areeverywhere. But what’s interesting about mayflies is that we only see them during their mating season, which is the last few days of their two-year lifespan.
“They’ve lived already two years in the lake on the bottom,” said Christine Mayer, a professor of Environmental Science at the University of Toledo. “They dig little burrows down into the sediment and they filter out organic material from the dirt that they’re digging around in. So that’s how they grow, and then this phase that we see that only lasts a couple of days is really only their adult reproductive phase.”
So, some may think mayflies come to the surface for a few days and then die, but that isn’t necessarily the case.
”People think, ‘Oh they only live for a couple of days’ and that’s not quite right,” said Mayer. “The flying stage only lives for a couple of days but they have a longer lifespan in the nymph form underwater.”
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So even though we only see them for a couple of days of their adult life, they affect numerous days of ours. The craziest part about mayflies and their reproduction is that we won’t see these eggs for two years.
“Each female lays hundreds of eggs. Maybe thousands,” said Mayer. “Quite a few for a tiny little bug. And the eggs are really tiny, like less than the head of a pin. So if one of these female mayflies goes to the water and drops her eggs, you won’t see those eggs until 2025, coming out as adults. Two years is a long time for an insect.”
Most people think that these two-year-old mayflies are, to a point, a useless bug, but they actually play a big role in the food cycle.
“They live on the bottom and grow on the bottom and they dig these little burrows and they hide from the fish,” explains Mayer. “So they’re getting energy that’s sunk to the bottom – little bits of algae and other things, they’re cleaning that up and eating it – and when they move up into the water and the fish eat them, they’re kind of cycling energy through the food web and getting it into fish. So they’re an important part of the food web, and they bring energy from the bottom up into the water that the fish then get to eat. Yellow perch love them, walleye love them. They’re a really good food source.”
Mayer said they are also good fertilizer for your garden, and they are a healthy sign of good water quality.
“In the 60s and 70s, they disappeared from the lake when it was super polluted with algal blooms. They started coming back in the 90s, which is a good sign for the lake.”
Another cool thing about mayflies is you can actually look at them and yourself be able to tell the difference between a male and female. Females are a little more yellow, golden color and males are a little more orangey-brown.
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And for those of you who may be seeing these mayflies for the first time – as they’ve begun being seen more inland – Mayer says is just simply because of the wind blowing the swarms in.
“When people are seeing them depends on when they hatch out – which depends on a lot of things such as water temperature and conditions – but then where exactly you see them depends on where within the basin they hatched out and which direction the wind is blowing,” said Mayer. “So they come out and they fly in swarms, but because they’re so light, the swarms get pushed around. So they’ll show up in one place because the wind is blowing there, and the next week they’ll show up in another place because the wind is blowing the other direction. The wind is what moves them around. One year might seem like an absolute crazy year, but that’s just because the wind blew them towards you.”
But no need to bug out if you see one – mayflies are harmless.
“The adult flying ones don’t even have mouths,” said Mayer. “They do not have a functional mouth. They do not have a stinger, they can’t bite you, they can’t do anything harmful to you except land on you, and they’re really light so they don’t hurt.”
But if you’re someone who can’t stand these insects, Mayer suggests keeping your lights off in order to keep them away from you and your home.
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Category: WHY
