No. It’s just a myth.
Sometime in the 1950s an experiment gone horribly wrong at the University of Florida produced a pesky bug with no apparent purpose. The strange-looking insect — commonly known as the lovebug — managed to escape from researchers and began to spread rapidly, wreaking havoc on people and cars.
"Although most people have heard, or told, this story in some form or another, it's just not true," said Thomas Fasulo, an extension entomologist with UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
"I started hearing this story in 1979, my first year as an entomologist in Florida, but other entomologists told me they heard the same story long before that," Fasulo said. "How it got started we just don't know."
The lovebug, which is actually a fly whose scientific name is Plecia nearctica, migrated naturally along the Gulf of Mexico, Fasulo said. It was first identified in southeastern Texas in 1940 and has since spread through the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, as well as Georgia and South Carolina. Read more at entnemdept.ufl.edu.
Tip! Learn ho to protect your car during love bug season at Tampabay.com.