Insects and Spiders Home Page

^{A Hover Fly collecting nectar.  Hover flies are common in gardens around South Africa and often mistaken for bees}

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Insects and spiders are two of the most successful and abundant groups of animals on earth. South Africa is home to 45 000 described species of insects and 3000 species of spider. The estimated number of species (i.e. those which have not been described) far exceed these figures. The reasons for their success are numerous:

• High reproductive output: Insects and spiders can lay many hundreds of eggs (e.g. certain species of flies lay 2000 - 6000 eggs at a time) which may take from 12 days to a few weeks to complete their development. Many generations are then produced in a year, being able to adapt to changing conditions (and thereby building resistance to pesticides in some cases!).
• Ability to fly using either wings or silk: Many insects are winged enabling them to disperse widely, find mates, seek food, escape enemies and radiate into new environments. Many spiders achieve the same simply by using silk to disperse by ballooning. They also use the silk to build webs to capture prey, to make egg sacs and in the case of some males, to attract female spiders.
• Being small: Small size means that little food is needed to sustain large populations while occupying a small habitat. e.g. some insects can complete their life cycles between the upper and lower surfaces of a leaf and others within a seed.
• The exoskeleton: The chitinous outer covering of insects and spiders specially designed to combine strength and rigidity with flexibility. It has been modified to form the most amazing array of adaptions for camouflage, defence and attraction of mates (apart from preventing them from desiccating).

If seeing these amazing creatures isn’t enough, their success is further substantiated by reading the Insect World Records  This is the University of Florida Book of Insect Records and a few examples have been given below.

Insect world records

• fastest flyer: Austrophlebia costalis, a dragonfly, flies at 98 km/h.
• survives the coldest temperature: Polypedilum vanderplanki, the African midge fly, can survive -270°C for 5 minutes.
• shortest generation time: Rhopalosiphum prunifolia, an aphid, is able to produce offspring which themselves will have offspring 4.7 days later!
• smallest eggs: Zenillia pullata, a parasitic fly, 0.02 - 0.2 mm long.
  fastest wing beat: Forcipomyia sp., a small fly, beats its wings at 1046 cycles per second.
• longest migration: Schistocerca gregaria, the desert locust, travelled 4500 km from West Africa across the Atlantic to the West Indies.
• most number of eggs: Dorylus wilverthi, the African driver ant, lays 2-4 million eggs every 25 days.
• most heat tolerant: Cataglyphis bicolor, a desert ant, forages on the hot desert sands above 60°C.
• longest migration: Schistocerca gregaria, the desert locust, travelled 4500 km from West Africa across the Atlantic to the West Indies.
• most number of eggs: Dorylus wilverthi, the African driver ant, lays 2-4 million eggs every 25 days.
• most heat tolerant: Cataglyphis bicolor, a desert ant, forages on the hot desert sands above 60°C.