I've noticed a ton of weird little bugs around here in Iowa lately.
They look like small ants but they have wings. At first glance, they appear to be flies, but they're not.
They kind of resemble a cross between a fly and an ant and their wings are fairly large.
They're friggin' everywhere around here! In my apartment, outside, and even inside my car.
I had to swat several of them off of me while driving earlier.
They seem to have literally appeared out of nowhere within the last week or so.
Anyone know what these things are?
Male Ants... its mating season.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MbW8chWYfI
-Ed
I hate those damn things. I just killed a few hundred of them the other day.
On the plus side, all the males will soon die off, and the females lose the wings and start colonies. So they won't be around much longer.
They mate in the air, and then the new queens can spread and start a new colony. They all do it at the same time (scientists aren't totally sure how they time it, actually) so the new queens have a chance of mating with someone besides a brother, in the hopes of increasing genetic diversity.
I had a lesson in hive-based genetic diversity recently. A friend of mine has bees, suddenly they became very hostile and stingy. I happend the meet a master beekeeper and found out what happened. Apparently her old queen died and a new queen stayed in the hive instead of swarming off to make a new colony. So her bees were inbreeding and that makes them hostile.
-Ed