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A Curious Case of Midges

Every winter, approximately at this time, I notice that midges start collecting on our shed outside.  My suspicion is that this is for mating, and that there is something about the shed that the midges like.  Last weekend I decided to see what I could find outside and to no great surprise I found a few midges on our barn.

I didn’t bother photographing them for very long because there weren’t that many of them, I already have a number of photographs of midges, and there weren’t any midges in really great photographic position.

Nevertheless, that didn’t prevent several mysteries from cropping up.

The first mystery came about when examining the photo about.  On the right side of the midge (its left) there is some kind of sac protruding.  This does appear to be a female midge (the males have a decorative head piece) so my first question is – what is that?  I do not have any detailed information on midges, so I can only guess.  Perhaps it is an egg?  A parasite?

As I mentioned before though, I only noticed this afterwards.  I felt I was done photographing midges for the day when I ran across this one.

Unfortunately my shots did not come out as good as I would have liked, but in this case I found a male midge (notice the head piece) drinking what appears to be a drop of water.  I am at least assuming that this is a drop of water, but could be mistaken.  Here’s a closer look.

This makes me wonder – is this nothing more that the midge is thirsty and wants a drink, or is this something more?  The midge was very preoccupied with this activity – letting me get a number of shots off.  Unfortunately the headdress makes it very difficult to get a close focus on the eyes.

What makes me question whether this is something more is after reading For Love of Insects, I learned that in many species the male insect obtains a specific set of chemicals from various sources, which he then presents as a ‘gift’ to the female.  Without a gift, no mating occurs – so the male is highly motivated to obtain the chemicals.  These chemicals often serve as protection for the insect – making it unpalatable to many predators.  When the male provides these chemicals to the female, the female uses some of them for her own protection and passes others to the eggs.

Therefore, I wonder whether the midge has found these chemicals here.  Perhaps the drop isn’t just water but is something from the plant – for instance the midge poked a hole in a vein.  This is all guessing of course.  I do not know what the true answer is.

Related posts:

1. Why aren’t you bugging me? OK, OK, so it’s been awhile since I have posted a decent old fashioned bug shot.  The reality is between being extremely busy and having rather lousy weather here I haven’t taken too many bug shots lately.  I hope to change this soon.  Last night we had a ton of...

Tags: drink, female, insect, macro, male, mating, midge, mystery, photography