Kirk Smiles, age 8, of Beckley, West Virginia, for his question:

Where do gnats lad their eggs?

Gnats are those bitsy bugs that fly around in pesky clouds. At least, that's what ordinary folk call them. Insect experts, however, have other names for them. It seems that there are several different kinds of gnats and it takes an expert to tell which is which. Usually he needs a magnifying glass to spot their different features. He identifies buffalo gnats and fungus gnats, gall gnats and dark winged fungus gnats. And he classifies each of these four in a different insect family.

All of these common gnats have a life cycle with four stages    egg larva, pupa, and adult winged insect. And all of them need moisture through their early stages. The buffalo gnat sometimes lays her eggs in streams. The larvae live in the water and the sleeping pupae stick to floating objects until they hatch and fly away. When streams are scarce, she does what the other common gnats do. She lays her eggs in moist soil. The larvae of most common gnats live and feed in damp earth and the pupae sleep there until they hatch into bitsy winged adults.