Dear UrbPan:
Sep. 6th, 2011 05:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanI grew up in the Desert, in Fort Collins, Colorado. We only get 10 inches of rain per year and there's no bodies of water near our house. There's a wetland about five miles away.
Every year we'd set up a kiddie pool and every year within a couple of days there'd be a water boatman or three in the pool http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_water_bug They are neat but they inflict painful bites.
Have you gotten any? Do you know how they travel from one body of water to another? I've always wondered if they hitchhike on ducks or something.
The short, forehead-slapping answer is: they fly.
I was wondering about this when I was a boy--water bugs would mysteriously end up in my neighbor's swimming pool--so I caught one, chucked it out of the water where it flopped for a few moments then buzzed off. By the way, if you look closely at the tree on your wikipedia link, you'll see that water boatmen are family Corixidae, they are harmless eaters of detritus and whatnot; backswimmers are family Notonectidae, and they are the bastards that can jab your hand with their rostrum. I wasn't really sure of the difference until I looked it up just now.
Every year we'd set up a kiddie pool and every year within a couple of days there'd be a water boatman or three in the pool http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_water_bug They are neat but they inflict painful bites.
Have you gotten any? Do you know how they travel from one body of water to another? I've always wondered if they hitchhike on ducks or something.
The short, forehead-slapping answer is: they fly.
I was wondering about this when I was a boy--water bugs would mysteriously end up in my neighbor's swimming pool--so I caught one, chucked it out of the water where it flopped for a few moments then buzzed off. By the way, if you look closely at the tree on your wikipedia link, you'll see that water boatmen are family Corixidae, they are harmless eaters of detritus and whatnot; backswimmers are family Notonectidae, and they are the bastards that can jab your hand with their rostrum. I wasn't really sure of the difference until I looked it up just now.
