Potato aphid
The potato aphid is a tiny pear-shaped bug, usually green but sometimes pink. Its feelers are even longer than its body. It sticks its beak into plants and sucks their sweet juice, and gardeners and farmers do not like that at all.
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Fun facts
A mother potato aphid can have up to seventy babies without any father, and there can be ten generations in one summer.
When it gets too crowded on a plant, some babies grow wings and fly away to find a new plant.
The babies look like tiny copies of the grown-ups and are grown up in about ten days.
It can carry plant illnesses from plant to plant, like viruses that make potato and tulip leaves sick.
It spends the winter as an egg on weeds and hatches in spring.
Most asked questions about Potato aphid
?Is the potato aphid harmful?
Not to people. It is a pest for plants because it sucks their sap and spreads plant illnesses.
?What does the potato aphid eat?
Plant sap. It likes potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage and lettuce, and over two hundred other plants.
?How big is a potato aphid?
Only about 4 millimetres long, smaller than a grain of rice.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Macrosiphum euphorbiae
- Group
- True bugs and cicadas
- Family
- Aphididae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hemiptera > Aphididae
- Lives on
- North America, Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Macrosiphum euphorbiae (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org. CC BY 3.0 us, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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