Sumac gall aphid
Melaphis rhois
The sumac gall aphid is a tiny woolly aphid that builds a home out of a leaf. It makes the leaf of a sumac bush grow a little pouch around it. Inside the pouch, a whole family of aphids lives safe and snug.
Lives in
Eastern North America, on staghorn and smooth sumac bushes
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not bite or sting, and it does not even hurt the sumac bush much.
What does it eat?
It sucks sap from sumac leaves. Some of the family spend part of the year on moss instead.
How fast is it?
Sumac gall aphid about 0.01 km/h (0.01 mph)
A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
The pouch is called a gall. It is sometimes red, so people call it a red pouch gall.
2
In late summer, winged females leave the pouch and fly to moss, where they start new families.
3
Fossils show that aphids like it have been switching between plants for about 48 million years.
you asked
Most asked questions about Sumac gall aphid
?Do sumac gall aphids hurt the plant?
No. Scientists say the galls hardly harm the sumac at all.
?What is the red pouch on a sumac leaf?
It is a gall, a little home that the leaf grows around a sumac gall aphid and its family.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Melaphis rhois
- Named by
- Fitch, 1866
- Group
- True bugs and cicadas
- Family
- Aphididae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hemiptera > Aphididae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Staghorn sumac aphid
Where the facts come from
- Melaphis rhois (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 Verne Equinox. CC BY 4.0, 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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