Derek Neary
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 29/98) - For the past few weeks, cyclists on the Frame Lake trail have been plagued by sandfly populations that seem to keep growing.

The result is often sandflies in one's hair, mouth nose or eyes.

Danny Shpeley, the assistant curator with the department of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, said the sandflies' early emergence, en masse, is due to the mild winter and a premature spring.

"They'll be around for a while and then they'll disappear," he said. "These things are not around for the entire season, by any means."

Sandflies, known to Shpeley as "midges" or "chironomids," feed on nectar. They have natural predators such small fish and birds, the swallow in particular, he said.

Although sandflies are from the same subgroup as mosquitoes, they do not bite.

"Midges are non-biting. There's no need to use repellents or anything like that," Shpeley said, adding that people may get that mistaken impression from a mosquito bite while within close proximity to sandflies.

Some sandflies are known to transmit parasites, which can infect dogs and even humans. Fortunately, those particular sandflies spend their days in Africa, the Indian sub-continent and around the Mediterranean. None have made their way to the NWT.

Mosquito populations, on the other hand, thrive in the Subarctic and tend to peak later in the summer. The sparse number that are visible now are the adults that have survived the winter, according to Shpeley. The numbers will continue to dwindle until the eggs hatch a whole new generation later in the summer.