Athena Rayne Anderson

This content is from a post originally published on October 6, 2011, on my blog “Pollinators Info” (no longer online).

Ah-hah! So you’ve seen the chocolates, have you!?

Well, then check this out:

So, what’s the mystery plant? To scientists it’s Theobroma cacao, but the rest of us just call it… CHOCOLATE!

And that critter in the middle? That’s a tiny midge fly in the genus Forcipomyia, and we wouldn’t have chocolate without it. (That might make Godiva very unhappy.) These flies are the primary pollinators of cacao flowers all over the world!

Here’s the kicker: those flies are biters!

Almost all the species in this midge family have females that need a blood meal to produce eggs. In my (painful) experience we called them sand fleas, but others know them as sand flies, punkies, pinkies, and biting midges. They climb into your eyes, ears, nose, or just walk around anywhere else and bite. And bite. And… sorry. (If you’ve met them before, you’ll understand!) It’s really quite maddening. They’re only a few millimeters long, but you wouldn’t guess that from the way their bite feels!

So, the take-home message is that even the annoying critters have a role in the ecosystem, and some of them make our sweetest desserts possible!

Featured photo from Pexels free pfotos.

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