But they are not very far away. Unlike humans, insects are cold-blooded. Their body temperatures rise and fall with the air temperature around them. Some adult insects such as certain butterflies and grasshoppers cannot take the cold and die off in the winter. Although the adults die, other life stages, such as eggs, larvae and pupae are able to survive the cold by entering diapause, a period of little or no activity.
Some insects survive the winter by creating galls on plants.
A gall is made up of extra thick layers of plant tissue that grow around an insect. Usually an adult insect lays an egg on the plant's surface. The young larva that hatches from the egg, bores into the plant tissue where it becomes surrounded by the gall. Once the gall has formed, the insect stays happily inside the gall, pupates, and emerges in the spring when the weather is nice. There are more than 1500 gall-forming insects in North America.