Three weeks after choking smoke from Canadian wildfires enveloped the city, an infestation of tiny flying bugs is the latest signal that some New Yorkers are interpreting as the portent of end times.
Since Wednesday, New Yorkers running, biking, walking or on subways, have reported tiny insects, moving in cloud-like swarms, around parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, in some cases making it hard to breathe.
The insects may be white or green, their size making it hard to tell with the naked eye. Their species is yet to be determined, but they have arrived alongside another, lighter, bout of Canadian smoke.
That has led some to speculate they could be among the pyrophilous, or “fire-loving”, species, including plants, fungi and animals, that benefit from fire. At least 25 families of insects in the orders Hemiptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera and Coleoptera are considered pyrophilous.
One of those, one known as Microsania imperfecta, has been observed to exhibit a positive response to a stimulus of smoke for mating and resources.
“Smoke appears to affect mating behavior, serving as a mating swarm marker. Higher populations occurred during winter than in summer,” according to the Encyclopedia of Entomology.
But others say the swarms are not a pyrophilous at all, but an indicator of a healthy environment.
Louis Sorkin, visiting scientist in the division of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, said that judging by the pictures he had been sent these insects were not a pyrophilous species.
“They are aphids not gnats/midges/flies,” Sorkin said in a email. “I don’t know the species, unfortunately.”
David Grimaldi, a curator and entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History, told The City that the bugs getting caught in peoples hair are in fact aphids that are usually wingless but can develop into a winged form when populations become crowded and food quality suffers.
The insects currently worrying New Yorkers are simply aphids transitioning to their winged stage, Grimadi told the outlet.
“When a population becomes very large … the emergence of winged morphs is impressive,” he said. “The good news? It means we have a healthy environment! No pesticides!”
Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann of the New York state integrated pest management program at Cornell University, told the outlet that she guessed that the warm weather had triggered a mass migration of winged aphids.
“Like most things, this will stop as quickly as it started,” Gangloff-Kaufmann predicted.
