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San Antonio's warm winter means more bugs around the house now — and even more bugs this spring — according to Molly Keck, at the local Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service Office.
Creepy, crawly things are thriving locally without freezing weather to kill them, their habitats, or their food sources. A hard freeze has yet to arrive inside the city limits of San Antonio this winter. The first freeze often occurs after Thanksgiving in our area.
Keck said if insects can survive winters in Alaska, even our worst winter freezes here do little to kill them off — that includes the winter blitz of February 2021. Many San Antonians suffered without water or power then, but bugs here were, well, snug as a bug.
She said insects have a number of ways to survive cold weather, including their own version of something that gets your car through a winter.
"Most insects, well, all insects probably, have a chemical in their body that acts like antifreeze, so when they get cold, they will kind of slow down their metabolism, appear to be dead," said Keck. "But then it warms up again and they come back to life."
Keck said insects can also survive a winter while in other stages of their life cycle, like being an egg or pupa, an immature stage between larva and adult.
Bugs can also find warm spots to burrow into to survive a winter too. More vegetation during a warm winter is one such spot. And more vegetation also means there is more for them to chew on to feed themselves and a spot to hide from predators.
Yes, it's a bug's life in San Antonio right now.
"More surviving to the next generation and then more food sources available to all those that did survive," Keck said. "And so, you just get kind of a population increase."
It's not all bad for those who fear insects, often called "entomophobia" or insect phobia. She said there may be fewer flies this spring because flies breed better in decaying matter and there's less of that without a freeze.
And since it's so warm outside with plenty of food for little critters, there will likely be fewer bugs sneaking inside your house to find a warm corner to rest or to check out what's for dinner in the kitchen.
