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UFC Freedom 250 is going to have a problem with insects [1]

['Chitown Kev', 'Sabrina Haake']

Date: 2026-06-14  

Many people know by experience that crickets are mostly active at night. Lots of folks also know that insects are attracted to lights.

Bill Cade and I did many years of research on crickets much of that in Austin, Texas at the Brackenridge Field Station . https://fieldstations.utexas.edu/field-stations/brackenridge-field-laboratory

At the time, the facility had no place to sleep but we kept cots and foam pads in a big closet. During the day we would sleep in that closet. The station was kept very cold so we slept very well. We would wake up and have a late lunch or early dinner and prepare for our observations for the night. We would look around at the ground in the arena. We needed to identify the crickets who died in the night by finding their painted thorax or a number that was glued to their thorax. We also had to find and label any new crickets that had flown in to the arena. To have individuals for the experiments, we had to collect them. We could hunt for them at the field station but we had to wear snake guards on our legs. We also collected across the street at the municipal golf course and at curbs under street lights on the UT. campus. Collecting at night was not that safe as the police and other people were curious about what we were doing. One scientist was killed doing just that, collecting by a roadside. Bill Cade was the world expert in Gryllus Texensis, the very cricket that was causing some problems at UT.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/2/1/2220868/community/Big-insect-science-Why-insects-are-attracked-to-lights

Crickets in Texas sometimes emerge in last numbers and create stinky problems as they entered buildings in unnoticed ways, air vents! Bill was called when UT’s Harry Ransom building was having bug issues. The building house valuable art pieces and a Wizard of Oz collection. Dermestid beetles eat dead stuff and old leather and fabric. What was happening was that crickets would get into the building and die. Demestids would eat them and then spread to the collections being preserved. Plus the crickets were coming in in great numbers through air conditioning vents, air vents other openings especially at the top of the building. This was where the lights were located. Crickets attracted to the lights would crawl into the building that way. So they called Bill and he said simply that they should cut out the lights during the big population explosion. That solved their smelly stink and helped with the dermerstid problem.

Then another time, the tower itself was having a similar problem when they would light the tower during these cricket outbreaks. Again, they called Bill and he said turn the tower off during these times.

https://www.npr.org/2007/07/30/12350092/crickets-thwart-texas-university-tradition

So, if there is a big source of light in one place during warm and wet weather, one can reliably predict that people sitting outside will be besieged by many kinds of insects that get confused and fly to the lights. There also insects like mosquitos that find their prey by following carbon dioxide of it’s breath. The female mosquito need a blood meal to create healthy eggs to lay. Let’s not even talk about the bugs those folks will bring on their own bodies as some hotels and motels have ongoing issues with bugs.

Bed bugs reproduce by traumatic insemination.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/14/800055180/community/ufc/

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