Like a plague of locusts, small, black-and-red flies swarmed the porch of Patricia Sagastume's beachfront home on the Bolivar Peninsula over the weekend. Dragonflies and birds swooped in behind them, taking advantage of the feast.

"We started seeing them two weeks ago, but they weren't too bad," Sagastume told Chron. "This weekend, we couldn't walk out the door, since they were all over the place."

The invaders are lovebugs, named for their habit of mating in flight. Found from Central America through the Gulf Coastal Plain and into Florida, the insects also appear in Georgia and South Carolina along the Atlantic Coast. Recently, they've begun showing up in the Houston area.

Despite the name, lovebugs are not "true bugs," just like stink bugs or assassin bugs. They're flies-also called March flies. "'Lovebug' comes from the adults remaining stuck together for several days during and after mating," said Wizzie Brown, an entomologist with the Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Service.