When the weather becomes milder and with temperatures closer to zero degrees, they emerge.
News24 have spoken to the Natural History Museum’s on-call biologist Didrik Vanhoenacker about which insects actually live in the snow and how they cope with winter so well compared to other insects.
How to get your car to survive the freezing cold in winter: “Many people are surprised”
The insects that live in the snow
There are mainly three insects that like snow. One of these insects is the springtails. It’s an insect that comes out around zero.
– They seem to move to new places by jumping on top of the snow and can orient themselves according to the sun, says Didrik Vanhoenacker.
Even snow dragonflies prefer a zero-degree temperature with cloudy and slightly humid weather.
– The advantage of cloudy weather is that it doesn’t get cold as quickly when the sun goes down. Then they have time to find somewhere to crawl under the snow again.
Affected by the snow chaos? Then you can get compensation
This is how insects survive the winter
Winter hawthorns want it colder and thrive in temperatures down to four degrees below zero.
– The insects can withstand freezing and ensure that the ice crystals only form between the cells. They arrange this by removing particles on which ice crystals can start to build inside the cells and increasing the amount of special particles outside the cells so that the ice crystals end up there instead, says Didrik Vanhoenacker to News24 and continues:
– However, this means that liquid is sucked out of the cells, so the frost resistance means that they must have drought-resistant cells. And if the frost-resistant insects freeze, they have to go into hibernation, they can’t move then.
Another way to survive is that they can have different antifreeze agents in their body fluids that lower the freezing point, something that snow dragonflies and creepers are particularly good at.
Sala municipality is mocked for its sanding of footpaths
NEVER do this with the car in winter – the expert busts the myth