When you are a tiny mosquito with only a week to live there just isn’t any time for romance; let alone privacy.
That’s why midges, the little black insects that have invaded the city in recent days, are skipping pleasantries and mating in large swarms across Toronto.
The swarms are particularly prevalent near the lakeshore, where countless eggs would have been laid back in October.
“They are mating swarms. The females sort of form a cluster and the males sort of cluster around them and they have a great old time just flying around and mating in the air,” Ontario Science Centre researcher David Sugarman told CP24.com on Thursday afternoon. “I mean they only have a week (to live).”
Midges are a distant cousin of the fly and are completely harmless, according to Sugarman.
Though the city typically sees as many as four waves of the bugs each year, Sugarman says they are particularly widespread this spring because of the large number of them that were seen in the city back in the fall, following a wet summer.
Midges nest in water and are often attracted to puddles and bodies of water.
“Last October we had these huge numbers of midges mating, the eggs got laid, the eggs sunk to the bottom, larvae hatched, they waited the whole winter in the mud and now with the warmer weather they are going to the surface and the adults are emerging,” Sugarman said. “If we have a warm humid summer this could be the summer of the midge. Even if the females’ lay only two eggs than you still have double the number you had before but the females don’t just lay two eggs; they lay a hundred or so. Just think of the mathematical possibilities there.”
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