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Sticker of Crown whitefly
Bug card No. 1243 of 4,939

Crown whitefly

Aleuroplatus coronata
Name means: “the young whitefly is ringed by a crown of waxy threads”
Eats: PlantsTrue bugs and cicadasForests and woods6 legs

The crown whitefly is a teeny flying insect, only about 1 millimetre long. It has a pale yellow body and four white wings that look dusty, like a tiny moth. It lives on oak trees and drinks their sap.

Lives in
The southern United States and Mexico, and now California too
Length
1 mm (0.04 in)
Top speed
about 0.06 km/h (0.04 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It is far too small to hurt you, and it does not even hurt its oak trees much.
What does it eat?
It sucks sap from oak and chestnut trees. Its favourite is the coast live oak.
For real!Photo of Crown whitefly
Picture by Jesse Rorabaugh. CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Crown whitefly about 1 mm long (0.04 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)
6 of them in a row are as long as one grain of ricecould run across a dinner table in 60 seconds

How big is Crown whitefly compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

The babies have legs at first, but they lose them. Then they stick to the underside of a leaf and do not move again until they grow up.

2

While it changes into a grown-up, it wears a crown of white waxy threads. That is how it got its name.

3

Little ladybirds and tiny wasps hunt crown whiteflies, which keeps their numbers down.

4

Some tiny wasps lay eggs inside the young whitefly. Then it changes colour, turning black, or from white to bright yellow and then brown.

you asked

Most asked questions about Crown whitefly

?Are crown whiteflies bad for trees?

Not very. When there are lots of them a tree may drop some leaves, but they do not really harm it.

?How big is a crown whitefly?

Only about 1 millimetre long, about as big as a grain of sand.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Aleuroplatus coronata
Group
True bugs and cicadas
Family
Aleyrodidae
Classification
Insecta > Hemiptera > Aleyrodidae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Aleuroplatus coronata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Jesse Rorabaugh. CC0, 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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