Last Spring, Karen and I were listening to WFCR on a drive to Boston. Naturalist, Laurie Sanders, was doing a segment on the spittlebug for her program, Field Notes. I was very familiar with the spittlebug. The short story… I had studied them in my fourth grade science class after coming across these spit collections on plants while out in the field. Karen was unfamiliar, so it kind of became this funny thing between us about the mystery of the mythical spittlebug. We even made up a little theme song about it.
While watering the garden earlier this week, I glanced over at one of our wild areas and was psyched to see these little spit collections created by you know who.
I quickly ran inside and pulled Karen out to see them. I swear, this was almost as if I were showing her bigfoot tracks.
Why do they make these frothy spit collections?
The spittlebug, aka: ‘the Froghopper’ does this for 2 main reasons:
1) The froth hides the nymph from the view of predators and parasites,
and 2) it insulates them against heat and cold by providing thermal and moisture control.
Spittlebugs can also jump over 70cm vertically. Beat that Fleas! For a nice time-elapsed view of just how they make their froth, check out this video:
That’s gross, Luke. I’ve never heard of them before either, but I think I’m okay with that.