Aphid of Green fly
Aphids are usually small, soft bodied insects. They are commonly known as greenfly and black fly. These insects lives on small plants and trees, especially on new buds and leaves and suck saps from new leaves, stems and flowers.
Ants & Aphids
Eggs of the insects are the favorite food of certain types of ants. Sometimes ants are farming the greenflies of their habitat to harvest their food.
Classification
Aphid, common name for any of a large group of insects, also popularly called plant lice or green flies. They are found worldwide as parasites on the roots, leaves, and stems of plants, to which they frequently do great damage. The mouthparts of this insects are adapted for piercing and sucking plants and consist of four long, sharp stylets within a proboscis (sheath).
Ants Eating Aphids – Video
Life
In autumn the females lay fertilized eggs that survive the winter in crevices and hatch in the spring, producing wingless females that reproduce parthenogenetically (without fertilization from males). The time of development is so short that the eggs sometimes hatch before they are laid.
After several generations, winged females are produced; they then migrate to other plants and continue asexual reproduction of wingless females. Toward the end of summer, winged males are produced, which fertilize the winter eggs.
Insects and Plant
The presence of greenflies are readily detected by marks, wrinkles, or abnormalities on the infested plant. Aphids emit from their anus a sweet glutinous substance called honeydew, which is eagerly sought by ants and other insects; ants may hide aphids and protect them from predators.
Aphids that feed on such plants as turnip, cabbage, potato, bean, apple, pear, and larch have been the cause of widespread damage, often as a result of transmitting plant viruses. Birds, spiders, parasitic wasps, hover-fly larvae, and lady beetles destroy great numbers of aphids.
