Others: Aphids, Caddisflies, and Lice

Although most arctic insects belong to one of the four orders in the submenu, there are a few representatives from many of the other 21 orders of insects.

Fleas and Lice

A louse that commonly infects arctic mammals.

The north provides no escape from pests; fleas and lice, members of the orders Siphonoptera, Mallophaga, and Anoplura, pester northern birds and mammals as they do in the south. Sheltered amongst fur or feathers, and feeding on blood or skin, these insects are safe from the cold. Fleas have small, narrow, laterally flattened bodies, and are wingless. Adult fleas live on warm-blooded animals, moving freely over the skin, using their well developed mouthparts to suck blood. Their sticky eggs are laid on the hairs or feathers of the host, or in the dirt or nesting material in their host’s lair. Their white, legless larvae usually forage on debris, like feathers or skin cells. In southern climes, the larvae metamorphose into adults inside a silken cocoon, and then jump onto a suitable animal when it passes by. However, in the Arctic, there are difficulties with this strategy because mammal densities are lower, so finding a new host is tough. Fleas, for this reason, are not as common in the High Arctic as elsewhere. For example, lemmings in the Low Arctic are infested with the lemming flea, Megabothris groenlandicus, while their northern counterparts are not.

Lice (singular, louse) are wingless, flattened insects that spend their entire lives on the body of their host, a bird or mammal. Many animals are pestered by a particular species of louse, including – in the Arctic – caribou, wolves, dogs, and other animals with fur. There are two kinds of lice, biting and sucking, which differ in their mode of feeding. Biting lice eat hair or feathers, while sucking lice feast on blood. Fleas and lice are not just a nuisance; their detrimental effects can be enough to kill young or weak animals.

Apatania zonella, a caddisfly

Caddisflies, members of the order Trichoptera, are aquatic as larvae, but terrestrial as adults. Fifteen or so species, occur in the Low Arctic, but only one species, Apatania zonella, is common in the High Arctic. Other common arctic caddisflies include Agrypnia straminea and Chilostigmodes areolatus. One arctic species, Sphagnophylax meiops, is an unusual caddisfly – its wings are so small that it cannot fly!

Various other insect groups in the Arctic have sucking mouthparts that are used to feed on plant sap. There are a few species of thrips (Order Thysanoptera), minute, plant-sucking insects, that often occupy flower heads. The order Hemiptera, the true bugs, includes numerous different types of insects, all of which are characterized by straw-like mouthparts that suck liquids for nourishment. Most in this order are plant feeders, and there are a few arctic leafhoppers (Family Cicadellidae), seed bugs (Family Lygaeidae), and plant bugs (Family Miridae). Aphids are one group of bugs with sucking mouthparts, in the order Homoptera, that are fairly well represented in Canada’s Arctic, with about 20 species. These small, winged insects, commonly found in large feeding groups in the crooks of stems and leaves, can do tremendous damage to a plant. They can also transmit plant diseases by transferring viruses from plant to plant within their saliva . Willows, saxifrages, sedges, and other major arctic plant groups are targets of aphid feeding.