Whatever happened to stick insects in north Texas, especially Dallas, Denton counties?
The last I’ve seen are the giant ones in Big Bend. They were common here in north Texas area I live in 60 years ago.
They’re still around
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=33.04994116529409&nelng=-95.55678357085563&place_id=any&subview=map&swlat=32.41457539065297&swlng=-97.64143933257438&taxon_id=47198
Lots of insects are a lot harder to find nowadays
As a bug-crazy kid growing up in the 1970/1980s, they were rare enough around my rural north TX home that I still remember the excitement in finding them–and I spent the entire day outside in habitat that would be ideal for them. Could it be that you’re not spending as much time outside in ideal habitat compared to 60 years ago?
1 Like
it could be that they’re simply rarer today, which is true of many insects and is especially likely if you’ve consistently not seen them for several years in a row, but stick insects can also go through dramatic population fluctuations where some years there are much larger numbers and other years they’re scarce. So it could also be that you have memories of a population boom and they just happened to be scarce at the moment.
I just noticed that Strongm found one at the Josey Ranch in Carrollton. That will make me look harder! It’s possible that I’m not in the environment enough. Or that there was an upswing in the population I’m recalling; that could go for the invasion of those green iridescent Japanese beetles we had one year, or the very heavy monarch migration that passed through. Thanks to all!
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.