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Sticker of Bay leafhopper
Bug card No. 0307 of 4,939

Bay leafhopper

Synophropsis lauri
Name means: “named after the bay laurel tree, its favourite plant”
Eats: PlantsTrue bugs and cicadasGardens and meadows6 legs

The bay leafhopper is a small leafhopper with see-through wings that can be grey or brick red. It has a yellowish, pointy head and very long feelers. It came from the lands around the Mediterranean Sea and is now spreading north across Europe.

Lives in
Around the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and now also in France, Germany, Belgium and Britain
Length
6.5 to 7 mm (0.26 to 0.28 in)
Top speed
about 0.94 km/h (0.58 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not bite or sting people.
What does it eat?
It sucks juice from evergreen trees and bushes. It loves bay laurel trees and ivy.
For real!Photo of Bay leafhopper
Picture by Keith Edkins. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Bay leafhopper about 7 mm long (0.28 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
small enough to sit on your fingernailcould run across a dinner table in 3.8 secondsmoves 37 times its own body length every second

How big is Bay leafhopper compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

The veins on its see-through wings look like thin white lines.

2

Some people say the males are grey and the females are red.

3

It reached London in 2007 and has kept spreading across Britain since then.

4

Its babies, called nymphs, are green and spend the winter as babies.

5

It is the only species in its group, so it has no close cousins.

you asked

Most asked questions about Bay leafhopper

?What does the bay leafhopper eat?

It sucks the juice of evergreen trees and bushes, like bay laurel, ivy and olive trees.

?Where does the bay leafhopper live?

It comes from around the Mediterranean, and now it also lives in France, Germany, Belgium and Britain.

?How big is the bay leafhopper?

Up to about 7 millimetres long, a bit smaller than a fingernail.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Synophropsis lauri
Named by
Horváth, 1897
Group
True bugs and cicadas
Family
Cicadellidae
Classification
Insecta > Hemiptera > Cicadellidae
Lives on
Europe, Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Synophropsis (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 Keith Edkins. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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