What is the life span of the water strider?

senga40...

Thank you for the interesting question.

The AlienExplorer site is the product of three teachers
with a combined 70 years of teaching experience. 
The following 2 pages from their site discuss the
water strider, or Jesus bugs, as they're commonly
called in the South (since they walk on water):

http://www.alienexplorer.com/ecology/p106.html

and

http://www.alienexplorer.com/ecology/p105.html

The latter page notes that they live "for several
months" after about 5 weeks as 'nymphs'.


The Singapore Zoological Gardens Docent website
has a page about 'pond skaters' here:

http://www.szgdocent.org/ff/f-wtrbg2.htm

They note that these "truly marine insects"
belong to the Gerridae family, and that there
are over 500 species of Gerrids,one of which
lives "on the ocean surface far out in the 
Pacific Ocean". Lifespans obviously vary, 
however they note about the common water strider:

"In temperate climates, the adults hibernate through
 the winter in vegetation along the water's edge.
 They emerge in spring to mate then die. The spring
 hatchlings are wingless and these mate again towards
 the end of summer. Their offspring are winged and
 fly off to take over other water bodies and hibernate
 through the winter."

So it seems that there are 2 generations within each
season, each living for several months.

The following page, from the Netherlands Institute of
Ecology, lists a more erudite paper by
Blanckenhorn, W.U. & Fairbairn, D.J. (1995),
which seems to identify the spring hatchlings
as the 'univoltine' life cycle, and the late 
summer brood as the 'bivoltine' life cycle:
http://www.nioo.knaw.nl/cto/PLANT/PVT/PLASTAB.HTM

'Univoltine' means one generation per year,
and 'bivoltine' means two generations per year,
according to Jamie Seymour's course notes for
the courses he teaches at James Cook University's
School of Tropical Biology, in Queensland,
Australia:
http://homes.jcu.edu.au/~zljes/zl3501/lecture8.htm


Searches done, via Google:

"water strider" lifespan
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22water+strider%22+lifespan

gerrids lifespan
://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=gerrids+lifespan

If you would like further information in regard to
this question, please feel free to post a request
for clarification BEFORE rating this answer.

sublime1-ga

Here is the answer I received by e-mail from Dr. Steve Taylor who
studies water striders at the University of Illinois:

"Some waterstriders live one year, others may have several generations
in a year - it depends on the species and the climate."
-- 
================================================================
Steve Taylor
Center for Biodiversity,   Illinois Natural History Survey
607 East Peabody Drive (MC-652),  Champaign  IL  61820-6970  USA
sjtaylor@inhs.uiuc.edu       http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~sjtaylor/
Phone: 217-333-5702 (work, with voice mail)    Fax: 217-333-4949
================================================================



"Adults live many months, and in northern parts of their range they
overwinter under fallen leaves on land near water."
http://www.enature.com/fieldguide/showSpeciesSH.asp?curGroupID=4&shapeID=1011&curPageNum=5&recnum=IS0099

They survive the winters by virtue of remarkable 
antifreezes that protect the tissues against ice formation. 


Life Cycle: "The water strider female will lay their eggs on the
waters edge attaching them to an object there. The young do not go
through complete metamorphoses. Instead the young look like a water
strider that is not fully developed. This nymph will mature in about 5
weeks."
http://www.lcra.org/lands/roughs/diamonds/organism/insects/waterstrider.htm


Search strategy: water strider; gerris remigisis; "gerris remigisis"
"life cycle"