[masraum]

Originally Posted by A930Rocket

I can’t believe the amount of love bugs this year. They are everywhere and trying to get in our homes. They seem to congregate at the smallest possible opening at the door. Do they fell the cool air and want in? Once in, they just sit around, not moving much.

Driving down from Charleston to Bluffton around 11 this morning, I went through a fog of love bugs so thick, it was like black rain that splattered all over the front and windshield of my truck.

Anyone else seeing them?

Bah! That's not love bugs!

The bugs spread across the state. By the late ’60s and early ’70s, there were so many lovebugs that it could be dangerous to drive during the day, said Dr. Norman Leppla, a professor in the University of Florida’s Department of Entomology and Nematology.

You’d have to pull off the interstate every 10 miles just to wipe the paste of guts from your windshield, or else you wouldn’t be able to see where you were going.

“Many service stations charge up to 75 cents to remove a lovebug incrustation if that motorist doesn’t buy at least 10 gallons of gasoline,” said a 1972 article in the St. Petersburg Times.

Forget about lemonade stands. Children used to stand along the highway offering lovebug cleaning services for a dollar.

The state’s Plant Industry Division took to the skies to solve the problem, spraying insecticides from a helicopter over the highway to kill the bugs. But they quickly came back.

In 1971, the Legislature shot down a bill that would have authorized $25,000 to stop the pests.

Politicians soon realized they’d made a mistake. Just one year later, the state of Florida decided it had enough of lovebugs.

In October 1972, Florida Democratic Rep. William Chappell Jr. testified in Washington, D.C., about the winged horrors his constituents were facing.

“The number of lovebugs in central and northeast Florida has reached mammoth proportions and constitutes an hazardous situation to the motoring public," Chappell told the Agriculture Department. "This epidemic has already affected the tourist trade and the local people are plagued with stopped-up air conditioners and radiators.”

Chappell wasn’t able to get the emergency funds he requested. The state of Florida had to finance the lovebug war on its own. That month, Florida Gov. Reubin Askew and other members of the Florida cabinet ultimately decided to devote $75,000 in state university research funds.

Researchers spent several years focusing on love bugs. By the end of the ’70s, lovebugs were still annoying, but not plentiful enough to be dangerous anymore.

To this day, entomologists still have no idea why the population dwindled, Leppla said.

“Typically, an 'alien invasive species’ like the lovebug arrives, becomes established, reproduces prolifically, and survives in high numbers until it is affected by limiting factors (pathogens, predators, parasites, competitors, host availability, etc.),” he wrote in an email.

Researchers don’t know the habitat limitations of lovebugs. Maybe it was too wet or dry for the larvae to survive? It’s also possible other creatures in nature helped — robins could have developed a taste for love bug larvae, or maybe armadillos found them first.

As the lovebug population decreased, the bugs no longer were a threat to drivers and slipped comfortably into the “nuisance” category. Researchers shifted their priorities to other, more dangerous critters.

“It’s been a decade since we’ve had enough bugs to clog radiators," Leppla said.