The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
From ants to bees to butterflies, how insects survive winter
Ants have antifreeze. As winter arrives, they go underground and hibernate. With their antennae switched off, they fill up on glycerol — a form of alcohol — which keeps their exoskeletons intact. Come spring, they thaw out, ready to march on the first picnic.
Throughout the landscape, other insects are moving, hiding in stone walls or houses — think stink bugs, think lady beetles — figuring out ways to get through the cold days ahead.
Just because the mosquitoes that sting us, or the katydids that sing us to sleep, aren’t around, it’s not quiet. Insect life is still buzzy.
“It’s very lively,” said Gale Ridge, an entomologist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven.
Start with the state’s streams and rivers. Despite the chill, aquatic insects are still alive, thriving and moving around.
“They are out there all winter,’’ said Mike Jastremski, watershed conservation director for the Housatonic Valley Association, the environmental advocacy group based in Cornwall.
Jastremski said caddisflies, mayflies and stoneflies are just part of the suite of aquatic insects people can see through their frosty breaths. These are nymphs that will emerge in the spring as adults.
Ridge, of the experiment station, said other insects shelter in the open environment.
Ticks, for example, simply burrow in the leaf litter, waiting for the last decent blood meal of the year. Neither sleet nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these little parasites from latching on to you. Even snow doesn’t kill ticks — it just provides them with a nice warm blanket. If there’s a thaw, they can emerge.
“That’s why ticks can be dangerous to hikers in January,’’ she said.
Ticks belong in the arthropod family, along with spiders. So do springtails, aka snow fleas.
They live in decaying organic material. They can’t fly. But using their tails as springboards, they can do some serious hopping.
Ridge said they’re around all year. But in late winter and early spring, they push up to the surface of the snow and we can see black dots against a white background.
“It’s a matter of contrast,’’ she said.
Honeybees retreat into their hives for the winter. Their metabolism slows down and they feed on the honey they’ve stored away. On warm winter days, they’ll emerge, and do some housekeeping, cleaning the hive, before heading back when the cold reestablishes itself.
Ridge said wild bees do the same thing.
“You’ll see them coming out of tree hollows,’’ she said.
Wasps and hornets die off in the cold. But Ridge said that young, fertilized queens find refuge in places like stone walls and wait out the winter. Come spring, they emerge, lay eggs and start a new tribe.
There are dormant insects and larvae that make their winger home in the bark of trees. That’s why you’ll see the winter avian regulars — chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and woodpeckers — working their way up tree trunks and out on branches in the cold. They’re pecking into the bark for food.
Some insects — most famously, monarch butterflies — survive New England winters by leaving the place entirely. So do green darner dragonflies.
But one butterfly species — the mourning cloak — toughs it out here
Redding lepidopterist Victor DeMasi said mourning cloaks shelter in place under tree bark and in man-made structures.
“You’ll find them in shingles, behind wooden shutters,’’ he said
They hibernate. Like ants, they produce glycerol — a natural antifreeze. They wait.
Then, when the weather turns, they warm up and flutter away. They have beautiful brown wings, with a yellow border. They’re usually the first butterflies people see in spring.
DeMasi said if they know where, and how to look, they can find butterfly egg masses, butterfly pupae, and butterfly cocoons in winter along with mourning cloaks — adults.
“You can find all four stages of butterfly life,’’ he said.
Some spiders die off in winter, leaving their egg sacs behind. Some scuttle into your house, or ride in a Christmas tree, weaving webs and leaving cobwebs in the corners.
Most live outside through the winter. They go dormant beneath the leaf litter and again, produce glycerol to act as an antifreeze. But they’re not true hibernators — if there’s a warm spell and they can go out and find a meal, they will.
All these insects are, in one way or another, waiting. Spring will come, eventually. They start moving, and mating.
“As soon as it warms up, things start all over,’’ Ridge said.