What is the life history of a water bud?
It’s great fun to spend a summery afternoon watching the water beetles in, on and around a shady pond. All these beetles and bugs are not necessarily related just because they share a love of the water. Some are water dwellers for only part of their lives. Some are long and leggy, some short and sturdy. All of them are air breathing creatures at all stages after hatching. Each has worked out his own tricks for supplying himself with air in, on and around the water.
The mosquito is a part time water dweller. A batch of pale, oval shaped eggs floats like a raft on the water till hatching time. Then the hungry little wigglers appear, living in the water and sipping air through holes in their tails. Later they go through a pupa stage a stage in which most insects sleep. The mosquito pupas, however, move about, though they do not eat.
The dragonfly is another part time water dweller. The dragonfly lays her eggs one at a time, placing them just below water level. Later, both the dragonflies and mosquitoes hatch into winged adults and fly away from their watery nurseries.
Other water bugs never desert their ponds and streams. There is the long legged strider who uses his spidery legs and special feet to walk on top of the water. There is the water scorpion, the back¬swimmer, the water boatman and the giant water bug. Not being related, we do not expect them necessarily to go through the same stages of development.
The eggs of the water strider are sealed in a wad of sticky goo and placed below the water. They hatch into nymphs, small wingless copies of their parents. These hungry fellows burst their skins and become bigger nymphs several times before they reach the adult winged stage. Often the strider spends the winter in his adult form cosily hidden in some burrow on the bank of the pond. For this reason he is one of the first spring arrivals on the pond.
The water scorpion lays her eggs upon the bottom of the pond; other water bugs lay their eggs on water plants, sometimes burying them in the stems. The whirligigs lay their eggs in a silken cocoon and place them on a water plant. This insect goes through larva and pupa stages before it becomes adult. At times the fierce, hungry larvae seem to fill the ponds. These little water tigers devour small fish and even tadpoles, when they reach the pupa stage, they crawl on land to rest in some safe burrow,
Almost every kind of water bug, it seems, has its own way of growing up. One way to be sure about which stage is which is to watch them grow up for yourself. Any shady pond will provide you with enough evidence to solve the mystery of the life story of your f favorite water bug,