First came the heat. Then the lovebugs invaded Seoul
Seoul – They make diving bombing pedestrians, carpet hiking trails and national headlines.
Known as “Lovebugs” or Plecia LongercepsThis invader Mart Fly type is the speech of Flummoxing government officials who disturbed the people who are trying to keep these “uninvited summer guests ,, as the capital of South Korea is called by the media.
These are called as these Lovebugs Because they are usually seen in the mating action, men and women tied to the hips while flying around. In 2015, they began to appear in the capital area, and some experts believe that they have passed through Southeast China.
According to Shin Seung-Gwan, a biologist at the University of Seoul National University, it is still a mystery why populations exploded this year.
While the media refers to climate change, Shin says that this statement cannot explain an important detail: not the warmer regions of the country, but in the areas near Seoul.
“I think more than climate change, it may have more interest with the effect of Urban Heat Island [occurring when a city has much warmer temperatures than the surrounding area]”He said.” But the scale of the existing population fluctuation is absolutely not normal and is something that requires more observation. “
Lovebugs It is harmless for people; They do not bite, nor do they carry disease. According to a youtuber who recently collected a bag and consumed them In the form of a patty -like patty like hamburger.
“Flavor is not A layer, but I think you can eat them,” he said in a video that details the experience. “The taste they give in the mountains like the unique smell. The taste like trees.”
His only sins arouses disgust as things stop.
Single insects that are more revised by the inhabitants of Seoul woodAccording to a survey conducted by the local data company, it adopts last year. Eighty -six percent of the participants said they saw them as pests.
According to government data, the resident complaints about the Lovebugs to the city increased more than twice the two floors from 4,418 to 9,296 between 2022 and 2024.
This is located everywhere, Conservative MP Ahn Cheol-Soo He recently called on a Lovebug metaphor to criticize the last cabinet rent of liberal president Lee Jae-Myung, a former governor of the state, who was convicted of a political scandal in 2019.
Ahn, like Lovebugs, seems to have a way for former prisoners to stay with other prisoners, Ah Ahn wrote on social media on social media.
Last year, some argued that the city should officially refer to the threats they refer to mental health – a movement that will officially allow their lovebugs to be destructed chemically. However, after expressing the concerns of environmental activists about health and safety, the municipal laws abandoned this idea.
This year, the city is called a different struggle because public patience is weakened: Lovebugs is a PR campaign to confuse the public image.
“Lovebugs, not pests! Excessive pest control only damages the environment and our health and should be avoided as much as possible,” he said.
“Despite their disgusting appearance,” Lovebugs also provides environmental benefits: Video: Adults dusting flowers, while larvae help the soil to natural compost.
Although the research is still in broader ecological effects, biologist Shin says that like many invasive species, Lovebug can find their own benign places in natural order.
“In the process of organisms that adapt to a new environment, the explosion of population in the absence of natural enemies is common.” “But over time, these natural enemies or pathogens emerge and the population density decreases.”
This was the case for an invasive insect once: the spotted lannfly.
He glorified the urban areas that were believed to have entered South Korea as stations in agricultural imports from Southeast China, and their population destroyed the crops until they began to stabilize with the emergence of a natural enemy: a parasitic wild bee that killed their eggs.
