Ruud Kleinpaste: Insects after the storm

Insects after the storm 

Last week we talked about school grounds, “learning forests” and “outdoor classrooms” demolished after the cyclone; 

What about the insects after the cyclone? 

Comments from Taupo teachers indicated that since the windy and rainy disaster the number of chirping cicadas had nose-dived to silence. 

Overnight! 

This could well mean that this particular cohort of cicadas will not have been able to lay their quota of eggs in the soil for the generation in 3 or 5 years from now! Interesting to watch that “blip” in the future. 

The rain will also have drowned myriads of soil dwellers, especially those that live in tunnels. Native bees (that create tunnels for their larvae) may find few offspring surviving, leading to a reduced amount of pollinating small, endemic bees next spring. 

Who will be affected???? Native flowering trees and shrubs! 

Tiger beetles will also drown in their silty tunnels – the only critters that might enjoy that news is their prey. (Spiders, ants, beetles, grubs, flies) 

The most sensitive group of soil-dwellers are probably earth worms, who are (in my opinion) the best drainage engineers we have. 

Our 175 or so native species (and 16 exotic types) are ones that aerate the soil, opening it up to great depths… 3 to 3.5 meters deep in the sub-soil”; 

of course they also transport organic matter down to the root zones, enhancing the top soil’s fertility. 

But a lot of the top soil has been washed away, leaving poor silt covering the earth. I reckon a heap of worms have drowned or covered by silt. 

We have huge, long worms (over a meter long!) and species that literally glow in the dark when disturbed. (Walter Buller saw a kiwi ripping a bioluminescent worm apart in the darkness of the night – what a light show!) 

Worms are food for birds (not just kiwi) and huge Native New Zealand snails 

With the loss of our valuable soil we need to become gardeners again to restore the soil’s ecosystems. 

Build up the organic material as much as you can; it will certainly reduce the amount of topsoil we lose via streams and rivers that flood out to sea. 

I have not flown over the east coast of our beautiful country, so I haven’t seen the erosion hit the sea. 

In a “normal” year we lose an amount of topsoil equivalent to the volume of the island of Waiheke! 

To me it feels as if we may have lost as much in just one cyclonic episode, a few weeks ago… 

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