The meadow spittlebug

Left:  Meadow spittlebug nymph encased in spittle.   Right:  Grassy area with spittlebugs

When camping, I enjoy going for a walk in any available natural areas close to me.  It usually means grabbing a camera and lens combination and heading out to explore what flora and fauna await discovery.  Yesterday I took an APS-C DSLR camera equipped with a 105 mm macro lens.  It was also equipped with a macro flash unit.  This combination has always served me well for my macro stuff.

I came to an abandoned field, once a golf course, and came upon a remarkable sight.  Spittlebugs.  OK, so maybe they are not so amazing in themselves, but this was different because there were thousands upon thousands of them.  The grass was teeming with them.  Some areas of grass were unaffected, but here and there were countless numbers.  You can see in the right photo above a small sample of this; multiply it by a couple of thousand and you have an idea of the scope.  Did I mention it was remarkable?

I pulled one stem of grass up and blew away some of the bubbles.  Under its frothy canopy was the meadow spittlebug; the insect which created the bubbly mass.  It is only the nymph (juvenile form of an insect with incomplete metamorphosis) which lives in the spittle.  It secretes mucus which it mixes with waste products and whips the concoction up into the resulting froth.  It provides protection against desiccation and keeps it from being detected by predators.

Adult spittlebugs are sometimes called froghoppers.  One species in this family has the record for jumping distance as it can cover 40x its own length.  If a six foot human had this same ability, they would be able to cover a distance of 240 feet; only 20 yards shy of the length of a football field.  Mind you, the person may have to spend their childhood and adolescence in a frothy encasement made of their own physical wastes and mucus secretions.  I don’t think the ability would be worth the sacrifice.  Just saying.

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