Talk:Lovebug

Among the worst

They say this lovebug season in Central Florida ranks among the worst in history...DJSEDISTICAL 00:07, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

In North Central Florida (Gainesville) the May 2007 lovebug season was minimal. We barely saw any. However, September 2006 was the worst ever! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.101.68.118 (talk) 13:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

This is all subjective. I remember living in central Florida in the early 80s when you had to carry a container of water and a brush in your car and stop every half hour or so to clean your windowshield. Even then the flights were not as massive as preceding decades. Now I don't even bother to attach the "lovebug screen" that I bought at an auto parts store. This used to be almost a requirement during the two flight seasons of the year. User:Trfasulo 09:14, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

In the late 1960's, lovebug swarms along I-10 (what there was of it) in northern Florida were--immense is an insufficient word. Clouds of many thousands of the critters, mile after mile after mile. They actually caused car engine overheating as they clogged grills and radiators with their corpses.They diminished and nobody complained, but I for one have always wondered what happened to them. Rumor was the robins ate them, but so many?? Wikipedia comes through again! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CF99:2080:ED5A:7BD9:4E6B:2871 (talk) 18:27, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Read the article. The decline of the lovebug as an immense problem is due to the fact that its natural biological controls caught up with the polulation. Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 02:47, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Ambiguous opener

The second paragraph states "At that time, he reported the incidence of lovebugs to be widespread, but most common in Texas, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. However, by the end of the 20th century the species had spread heavily to all areas bordering the Gulf of Mexico, as well as Georgia and South Carolina." But this makes no sense. All the states in the initial distribution border the Gulf of Mexico, so the 2nd sentence makes no sense. Furthermore, Georgia borders the Gulf of Mexico. I'm hesitant to edit, as I'm not clear on what the intended/correct text should be. Tfocker4 (talk) 11:13, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

 Er, Georgia borders the Gulf? Regionally, maybe, but not directly. Are you perhaps thinking of Alabama?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CF99:2080:1A8:84AF:19FB:9266 (talk) 22:12, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Poorly Written

This article reads less as a description of the species and its behavior and more as a propaganda piece against lovebugs. Several sentences are worded VERY poorly ("The love bug is a pest costing Floridians more in car washes," gets bonus points for being both vague AND inaccurate; the lovebug is a semi-annual pest in Florida and the Southern US, not a pest species) and paragraphs are composed of different topics hastily jammed together without any kind of transition or information to relate them. Considering the additional failures throughout the article to uphold the standards of academic writing (why is so much of this written with a narrative???), this reads less as a well-researched summary of information and more as a second-rate elementary school research project.

The section on the species' 'Semi-annual pest status' is a particularly terrible example of the faults of this piece, beginning with a more-or-less accurate account (albeit incredibly lacking as far as quality of writing is concerned) of the species' mating behavior and then jumping to the species' interactions with Florida motorists. There should be one section to describe the mating behavior of the species and the resultant swarming and another to describe their semi-annual pest status across the Southern United States (Florida isn't the only state with lovebug swarms and this should be noted at least somewhere in the article).

Similarly awful, the section on 'Management' (which should be specified to something along the lines of population control, concerns over population, etc.) is so poorly written that one actually manages to finish it knowing less about the environmental controls that limited the spread of this species. This entire section needs to be reworked from the ground up, removing any of the narrative elements, properly dividing the two subjects present (the concerns over the species' population and the natural controls such as predators, environmental controls, etc. they face in the wild), and doing whatever else is necessary to prevent whatever the hell this sentence is supposed to be from happening ever again:

"However, as pest populations migrate naturally, their natural controls are usually not far behind. While it often took decades, lovebug flights are no longer present in the huge numbers that once existed simply because their natural controls (mostly fungi) caught up with established populations."

Additionally, as seen in the prior example, the species is referred to as a 'pest species' throughout the article in spite of doing very little actual damage, not being invasive (having naturally migrated to the regions it currently is found in), and doing no harm to local vegetation or crops. If anything, the species should be regarded as a nuisance to motorists and entomophobes.

I cannot believe an article on a species so infamous is in this kind of condition. CarefulWording (talk) 21:41, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

LOL. It is ironic that someone that titles themselves "CarefulWording" should apparently be ignorant of the fact that "pest" and "nuisance" are synonyms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:589:300:C7C0:84C3:81E3:4B4B:1C0E (talk) 01:37, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

your rant was entertaining. 173.21.176.37 (talk) 22:32, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

When several species of a genus are called lovebugs, why does this one species get the title?

Was just reading a NYTimes story about lovebugs in South Korea, so went to Wikipedia to learn more. Seems like "lovebug" should redirect to Plecia. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:31, 4 July 2025 (UTC)