NPR: Look Up! The Billion-Bug Highway You Can’t See
You can see them launching themselves, says entomologist Matt Greenstone:
“They just stand straight up on their little back legs and just by doing that they can get part of their body up into this layer [of air] where it’s more turbulent and then, if you can get a ride on a parcel that’s going up, you can get off the ground and then if you’re lucky you can get carried aloft.”