Although this year’s class of mayflies will likely keep emerging from western Lake Erie for another week or two, it appears that prevailing winds have pushed the biggest 2016 swarms to the Point Place region of North Toledo and just across the state line into the southeast corner of Michigan.
Christine M. Mayer, a University of Toledo aquatic ecologist and researcher at UT’s Lake Erie Center near Maumee Bay State Park, said the flight of the harmless insects is highly dependent on the wind direction as they emerge from the lake.
Mayflies can be found in many parts of North America and there are many species of them, Ms. Mayer said.
Those in this part of the country spend their first two years in lake sediment as nymphs. Once they get their wings and take flight as adults, they only live a few hours — probably no more than a day at most — out of the water.
Because they’re so light, they go wherever the wind takes them.
In past years, that has meant Point Place, Port Clinton, Monroe, and Ontario’s southern shoreline often taking turns.
Port Clinton got hammered so bad one time it actually got out its snowplows in June to scrape dead mayflies off streets that had become too slippery from the rotting carcasses.
The important thing, Ms. Mayer and others said, is to maintain a positive attitude and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor about mayflies.
They’re what you might call a brief and fun annoyance. Mayflies don’t bite: Nature doesn’t equip them with a mouth. They don’t have stingers.
They’re a sign of improving water quality because they thrive only in healthy sediment and oxygen-rich water.
They’re also tasty morsels to fish and birds, playing an important role in the food chain, Ms. Mayer said.
“People should see them in a positive light,” she said. “They are a very big part of the food web.”
The millions that people see temporarily covering walls, light fixtures, headlights, doors, and bright signs is only a fraction of what is in the lake — that is, those which have eluded fish.
Nobody knows why mayflies and other insects are drawn to light. But think of brightly lit signs as “singles bars for mayflies,” Ms. Mayer said with a chuckle. The insects are looking for mates during the few hours they’re flying around as adults. Females go back into the water to lay larvae that will keep the cycle going with a future generation of nymphs.
One of Ms. Mayer’s former UT students, Kristen DeVanna Fussell, became so enamored with the mayfly story that she made it her 2011 doctoral dissertation.
Now a research development and grants manager for Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory near Put-in-Bay, Ms. Fussell agreed Point Place appears to be the place for mayflies this year.
“Overall, it’s been a pretty typical year,” Ms. Fussell said. “People should just respect them and let them finish their life cycle.”
Detweiler Park Golf Course in North Toledo had a lot of mayflies over the weekend, Carol Stepien, UT Lake Erie Center director, said.
Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.
First Published June 21, 2016, 4:00 a.m.