Re: Insects/Large Animals

[gbarden@mailhost.dpie.gov.au (Graeme Barden)]

At 11:27 AM 7/03/96 -0500, Dennis R. Ruez, Jr. wrote:
> African locusts.  They spend about four weeks in a 
>larval stage in some of the larger lakes before a couple day life span as 
>fliers.  When they do emerge from the water, the numbers are incredible.  
>It was these swarms which caused early European explorers to describe 
>Lake Victoria and others as "smoking."  When airborn, the bugs' are 
>preyed on by birds (obviously), but the most significant predators are 
>humans, which consider bug burgers a dietary staple.  
>
>In the water the larva are helpless and are preyed upon by fish.  This 
>isn't comparable to whale feeding, but maybe locusts couldn't survive 
>under the stress of large filter feeders.
>
>Dennis

Are you sure? Grasshoppers lay eggs that can drown! Hatchlings are at best a
pronymph, that being a nymph wrapped in a larval cuticle that is very
quickly shed post-hatching. There are then a few progressive nymphal stages
until adulthood. At this stage they swarm. If the story is true, I'd very
much like to see more of it (which I will attempt to do). I'm an
entomologist by training, and have never heard of such a life cycle for
locusts. They weren't dragonflies were they?

Curious,

Graeme.