Aphidoidea

About

Green aphids on the stem of a plant

The superfamily Aphidoidea (German: Blattläuse) contains all aphids from around the world. With aphids it can be hard to narrow down the species without genetic sequencing.

One good indicator for which species you are looking at is the host plant. For example, Aphis sambuci is specialized on elder flower bushes. If an elder flower has its stems completely covered in black dots, that's sambuci in action. (With larger plants such as bushes the aphids usually don't cause any problems to the host plant. It is completely normal for an elder flower bush to be covered in aphids. They can, however, hurt annual and decorative plants such as delicate flowers or fragile houseplants, by feeding on them.) But when ants get involved and keep a herd of aphids whose secretions they especially like, it gets complicated because that little herd, much like with cattle humans keep, can be fed on different plants.

Sam says

Aphids were one of the main reasons I chose to get a real camera again around the year 2021. It was straight up frustrating being able to see them clearly, see how cute some of them as individual animals are, but never being able to capture them in clear pictures. I love watching ants herd their aphids and I think some of the over 5.000 species, such as the bright yellow Aphis nerii, are beautiful to look at. Being able to take photos where you can actually see them interact with each other and other animals is awesome.

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