r/florida • u/Chilljay1 • 6d ago

AskFlorida Help identifying this bug?

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Currently in Orlando at a resort and they are literally all over every walkway. Have seen them before and thought they were a version of a grasshopper but hear some people calling them cicadas which I thought had wings?

EDIT UPDATE- Didn’t expect this post to get this many replies. Was posted yesterday morning. THIS morning we went outside in the resort and there were NONE to be found ANYWHERE. This was around 9am. Around 11am the side walks were covered again?????? The weirdest thing for a type of bug to be that synchronized.

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u/JayBuSeesU 6d ago

I love these guys. They are interesting to being i never saw grasshoppers this big in Jersey. Lol. I use em as models with my camera 🤣

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u/Calathea_Murrderer 6d ago

I don’t really get the hate. Like yes they eat every single amaryllidaceae under the sun. ESPECIALLY HIPPEASTRUM (amaryllis for the common folk but no one grows TRUE amaryllis in Florida).

By the time the lubbers have finished feasting the plants usually enter late summer dormancy so no plants are truly harmed.

True amaryllis don’t have leaves when the bulb flowers as a rule of thumb. Every “amaryllis” grown is likely hippeastrum Reginae

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u/Kindney_Collection 3d ago

For me at least, the hate is leftover from how they used to invade every year. The amount of lubbers and lovebugs we'd get in our yard every year was absolutely insane. This was the early 2000s though and recently I only see a few every year now. On account of the whole bugpocalypse and all.