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Updated: June 11, 2025
We have seen that by many species of plant-lice, scale-insects, and leaf-hoppers, a honey-like fluid is secreted that attracts ants to attend upon them. In many of the Homoptera, this secretion only amounts to a white powder covering the body, as in some of the Fulgoridae. In others it is more abundant, and it reaches its extreme limit in a species of Phenax that I found at Santo Domingo.
This organ is common to the aphis with all the other bugs and plant-lice. These tubes are not found in quite all species of aphides, but they are very common among the class, and they form by far the most conspicuous and interesting organs in all those aphides which do possess them.
By this is meant the following phenomenon: Certain animals, as the salpa and doliolum of the order of the tunicata, as well as certain mites and many tape-worms, produce offspring which are wholly dissimilar to the mother stock. The plant-lice transmit themselves through six, seven, even ten generations by means of sprouts, until a generation appears which lays eggs.
Next, the king took him on a long trip around the swamp, and taught him to select the proper places to hunt for worms; how to search under leaves for plant-lice and slugs for meat; which berries were good and safe, and the kind of weeds that bore the most and best seeds. He showed him how to find tiny pebbles to grind his food, and how to sharpen and polish his beak.
If the facts I have described are sufficient to show that some plants are benefited by supplying ants with honey from glands on their leaves and flower-buds, I shall not have much difficulty in proving that many plant-lice, scale-insects, and leaf-hoppers, that also attract ants by furnishing them with honey-like food, are, similarly benefited. The aphides are the principal ant-cows of Europe.
These are the Aphides sometimes unprettily called plant-lice, and vaguely spoken of by the uninformed as "blight" and they nourish themselves on vegetable juices, that thin green blood which is the plant's life. This, then, is the fruit which the birds have, come to gather.
Having more than enough and to spare for all their own needs, and the needs of their offspring, the plant-lice can afford to employ a little of their nutriment as a bribe to secure them from the attacks of possible enemies. Such compensatory bribes are common enough in the economy of nature.
The plant-lice "naturally" reproduce through the summer by unfertilised eggs producing only females, but in the first cold of autumn males are hatched from some of the eggs, and the eggs of this generation are fertilised and bide through the winter, hatching in the following spring.
Of late years there has been widespread complaint of failure with this plant, because of the attack of aphides. These little green plant-lice locate themselves on the underside of the tender foliage, before it is fully developed, and cause it to curl in an unsightly way. The harm is done by these pests sucking the juices from the leaf.
Plants seem to have acquired all these devices, such as close networks of hair upon the leaves, strong essences, bitter or pungent juices, and poisonous principles, mainly as deterrents for insect enemies, of which caterpillars and plant-lice are by far the most destructive.
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