Spotting grass hoppers around the Valley? The presence of warm weather and some rainfall created the appropriate conditions for grasshoppers to start appearing once again throughout Arizona neighborhoods.
People may start encountering the pallid-winged grasshopper outside. The rainfall and coolness means more plants blooming for these insects to eat.
Sydney Millerwise is a doctoral student with the Global Locust Initiative at ASU.
“We're sort of in the sweet spot of when we would expect to see them a little bit on the early side right now. Again, typically we just see those hatchlings start coming out in February. They'll hatch all the way through March. Then it takes them about 45 days-ish to become adults. And then they'll eventually lay their eggs," she said.
Millerwise says people shouldn’t be concerned about the small creatures as they can’t bite nor sting. She advises against using pesticides as using this substance would poison grasshoppers’ predators. Instead, she suggests alternative methods like covering plants.
“They may be interested in some of your plants at home. And I would advise against using pesticides because a lot of times those pesticides that kill the bugs, a bunch of birds or coyotes or other critters will eat a ton of those poisoned grasshoppers and then that can poison the predators themselves," she said.
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