Where Did the Windshield Bugs Go?

Those of us with gray hair (or no hair!) remember driving to the lake to fish, and coming back with two dozen greasy bug bodies splattered on the windshield.

If you do that same trip today, however, your windscreen is likely to see little more than dust.

What happened to the bugs?

The natural assumption is that all the insects are gone — crushed by a rising tide of insecticide spraying.

There’s just one problem with that theory — we’re doing ** less ** agricultural spraying of insecticides, not more.

Another problem: there’s no real evidence of broad insect decline in the US. See >> https://theconversation.com/insect-apocalypse-not-so-fast-at-least-in-north-america-141107?

Cotton, corn, and soybean fields used to get spayed with insecticide, but not so much anymore.

Vast areas of private forest, fallow fields, and wheat have never seen insecticides — to say nothing of over 500 million acres of public lands.

There are more organic farms than ever, and huge quantities of our fruits and vegetables are not even grown in this country anymore.

So what’s going on?

One factor is the introduction of genetically-modified crops fixed with a natural soil bacteria called Bt — Bacillus thuringiensis. This bacteria is fatal to a wide array of insects that predate on corn (corn borer), cotton (boll weevil), and soy beans.

The “bugs” that most Americans used to scrape off their windshields were extremely high in European Corn Borer moths, but those foreign moths are now largely gone. See >> https://www.agriculture.com/crops/corn/european-corn-borer-still-lurks?

GMO Bt crops are a marvel. Not only do they not have to be sprayed for bugs, the Bt only kills insects that predate on the GMO plants — insects that were once in unnaturally high numbers because of the monoculture nature of so much American farming.

While in the “good old days” aerial and tractor spraying of insecticides killed bugs (and birds) imperfectly and indiscriminately, modern GMO crops with Bt select for true pests, nail them hard, and leave birds and butterflies unaffected.

Another factor is that the box-shaped flat-screen cars of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s have gone the way of slide rules and fax machines.

Modern cars are sleek, streamlined, wind-tunnel tested machines designed to create a rushing airfoil around the car. Bugs that used to go “splat” are now more likely to be carried up and over by a carefully designed Detroit-engineered slip-stream that also increases fuel efficiency.

A third factor is the increased use of mechanical mowers, often with boom attachments that can cut down roadside vegetation before it flowers. Where roadside ditches and slopes used to hold grass and weeds that served as insect breeding areas and deer bedding spots, power mowers have widened view lines, reducing both deer-vehicle impacts, and insect splats alike.

And, of course, with so many narrow two-lane roads falling to interstates and overpasses, insects have to fly farther and farther from vegetation in order to hit a windshield. No surprise then that we can go a month or more now without hitting the washer fluid button.

A fourth factor, somewhat related to roadside mowing, is intensified mechanical hay mowing which reduces the chance for insects, and birds, to breed. Around here every field is cut and bailed twice as often as it once was.

Add it all up, and the good news is that the bad news (at least in the US) is probably wrong — or at least a lot more complicated than most imagine

Is this a story being told?

Nope.

But maybe it should be.