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The top four , by the way, are New Orleans, Houston, Miami, and Atlanta. The first Northern city on the list, New York City, comes in at #9.
I never said that there wouldn't be encounters with such pests in the South. But you wanted to know if there was any truth to the claim I posited about insects moving indoors during winter. See below:
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Originally Posted by BadgerFilms
What you are saying is a load of bull.
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Contrary to popular belief, cockroaches aren’t simply attracted to messy households. In fact, cockroaches move indoors during fall and winter to find warmth and escape the cold. Of course, that pizza left sitting out on the kitchen counter is just asking for a cockroach infestation.
And not one person so far has addressed the fact that the Arctic Circle has the worst mosquito swarms on Earth. There are many critical factors in these situations that go beyond just having a longer warm season. I doubt you see mosquito swarms like this in the deep subtropics/tropics:
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Mosquito “swarms” occur across Alaska in the spring and summer when the hungry insects hatch. Seasonal swarm strength is dictated by the weather, and conditions this year may have been particularly favorable for the state’s insects, according to Alaska-based radio station KTNA.
North Slope mosquitoes are notoriously aggressive and large, according to The Seattle Times. The region’s “skeeters,” as they are commonly called, have been known to drive the direction of caribou herds and feed on animals as diverse as rabbits and frogs. (Krause told the Dispatch that the bugs are so ruthless, he once saw a pair of mosquitoes feeding from a horsefly.)
Certain posters also didn't take time to do the math. If a single bat can take care of 1000 mosquitoes, then thousands of bats can take care of millions of mosquitoes (1000 bats X 1000 mosquitoes per bat = 1,000,000 mosquitoes eaten total). Then there are loads of different species of lizards, frogs, dragonflies, birds, shrews, etc to aid as well:
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Originally Posted by BadgerFilms
A higher proportion of insectivores means nothing. Not when the warm season is substantially longer and not when the bug population is so high anyway. "A bat eats 1,000 mosquitoes a day" yea too bad there's millions of mosquitoes. Hah!
Overall, there is no suggestion that the insect population of the North is as numerous and diverse as in the South. All that's being said is that there are more controlling factors in the Southern insect population than people realize, and also that the North can indeed have worse insect issues in certain respects.
Basically speaking, more standing water = more mosquitoes. I don't believe humidity (of the air) has much to do with mosquitoes but drier air often means less standing water. It's a correlation without causation.
Anyways, in the USA the biggest factor if you will face mosquitoes is if you live in a urban, suburban, or rural area. The more rural the more mosquitoes as standing water is not drained or sprayed. I see a lot of talk about Miami having a mosquito problem but at my condo in Miami Beach there is no mosquito problem. I can keep doors open and only occasionally will I spot one. And no it's not because of bats, or birds, or lizards but because Miami Beach is basically a concrete jungle that ensures there is no standing freshwater.
I wish I had a nickel for every guest from Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, etc. who has sat out on my porch on a pleasant summer evening in SoCal and said, "It's so great to sit outside without being eaten alive!"
Or they could just treat their yard for mosquitoes, which we do here in northeast Texas - we literally NEVER have any mosquitoes!
Basically speaking, more standing water = more mosquitoes. I don't believe humidity (of the air) has much to do with mosquitoes but drier air often means less standing water. It's a correlation without causation.
Anyways, in the USA the biggest factor if you will face mosquitoes is if you live in a urban, suburban, or rural area. The more rural the more mosquitoes as standing water is not drained or sprayed. I see a lot of talk about Miami having a mosquito problem but at my condo in Miami Beach there is no mosquito problem. I can keep doors open and only occasionally will I spot one. And no it's not because of bats, or birds, or lizards but because Miami Beach is basically a concrete jungle that ensures there is no standing freshwater.
Yes, and in the suburbs where I grew up its a different story. It was a very common practice to try to dump out standing water in the backyard after it rains. I can't count how many lizards we had running around the yard and on the walls and stuff and we STILL got eaten alive. And I never seen a goddamn bat in Miami in my whole life either.
Or they could just treat their yard for mosquitoes, which we do here in northeast Texas - we literally NEVER have any mosquitoes!
We have a mosquito tent for our backyard here. Honestly, this whole bug thing is getting outta hand. I personally am not a huge bug hater, I do hate mosquitos but I would not go outta my way to never see them again. But you can't act like the South does have far more bugs that persist for longer. It's silly to deny that. And again, not all bugs are all that bad. Texas summers aren't the same without cicadas in the day or without fireflies at night.
I will say the worst bugs to deal with in Texas aren't mosquitos, it's FIELD CRICKETS. I remember when I used to live in rural West Texas we had a field cricket population through the roof. You wanna talk about bugs that get inside (and not because of weather) look at field crickets! And they get in HUGE groups and if you ever smell a dead pile of them you would swear it was roadkill.
For whatever it's worth I've lived in Iowa and Chicago for 36 years and have basically never seen any insects, mosquitos and very very few spiders (what would they eat) during the winter months indoors.
They just vanish from November to May.
I've seen cockroaches at dive bars or old school messy restaurants, although I've never really heard of cockroaches in people's homes up north. At least the upper Midwest.
When and why did the thread get dreailed from a discussion about changing seasons being overrated, to pages and pages about mosquitoes, cockroaches and bats?
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