Aphid

Red pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum); Figure from: Valmalette et al., 2012 In 2010, scientists at the University of Arizona showed that aphids can produce their own carotene. No other animals are known to produce this important antioxidant and must therefore obtain it from their diets. Aphids apparently acquired this ability to produce carotenoids from a fungal gene that was incorporated into their own genome at some point in evolutionary history. Because aphids were shown to produce large amounts of carotenoids, researchers Valmalette et al., wanted to know if the carotenoids served any…

Viruses and bacteria often act as parasites, infecting a host, reproducing at its expense and causing disease and death. But not always - sometimes, their infections are positively beneficial and on rare occasions, they can actually defend their hosts from parasitism rather than playing the role themselves. In the body of one species of aphid, a bacterium and a virus have formed a unlikely partnership to defend their host from a lethal wasp called Aphidius ervi. The wasp turns aphids into living larders for its larvae, laying eggs inside unfortunate animals that are eventually eaten from…

Imagine that a massive hole appeared in a wall of your house, and you'd decided to fix it yourself. You head over to a DIY store and load up on plaster, tools and paint and look forward to many hard and tedious hours of work. If that seems like a chore, you might get some perspective by considering the plight of the gall aphid Nipponaphis monzeni. When holes appear in their homes, some unlucky individuals are tasked with repairing the damage using their own bodily fluids. They sacrifice themselves for the sake of some DIY. Some species of aphids are heading towards the incredibly cooperative…

It's a scene straight out of a horror film - you look around and see dead bodies everywhere. They haven't just been killed either, they've been hollowed out from the inside-out leaving behind grotesque mummified shells. What would you do if you were confronted with such a macabre scene? Flee? Well, if you were an aphid, you'd probably just feel relieved and go about your business. Aphids, it seems, find security among the corpses of their peers. Aphids, like almost all insects, are the targets of parasitic wasps that implant eggs inside their bodies. On hatching, the wasp grubs use the aphid…