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Photo#338427
Aphids - camouflaged on broccoli - Brevicoryne brassicae

Aphids - camouflaged on broccoli - Brevicoryne brassicae
North Wilmington, New Castle County, Delaware, USA
September 28, 2009
Size: 1-3 mm
These aphids are the size, shape and color of the broccoli florets. They were also all over the rest of the broccoli, but easier to see on smooth leaves and stems.

In the upper left, there are also a few syrphid fly larvae that are the same long, narrow shape and yellowish color as the stems of the florets. Camouflage or coincidence?

Moved
Moved from Aphids.

 
cool, you're doing aphid ID's?
I noticed a couple of other people's aphid images that I was subscribed to have been moved to genus or even species too. Have you found a good resource for aphid ID? I have a bunch of unidentified aphid images that I haven't posted because there haven't been many people able to ID them.

I can't take very good macro photos w/ my pathetic camera, so it might still be hard to tell what they are from their appearance, but I do know what all the foodplants are, thanks to my botanist husband - I know that helps w/ aphid ID a lot.

What I'm roundabout-ly saying is, since you're doing so well w/ ID'ing aphids, if I post some of mine w/ foodplant info will you have time to take a look at them? I'd love to know more about aphids, since they're prime lady beetle chow!

 
The short answer...
go for it!
Make no mistake about it, I know just about as little about aphids as the next guy. But since no aphid experts ever visit BugGuide, as far as I know, I'm doing my best to ID them, and knowing the host plant is mainly how I'm doing that. I found a good reference for Uroleucon (almost all Asteraceae-feeding) yesterday, and they were easy to spot in thumbnails (more or less bright red) so I went through all the aphid pages and moved them to genus, or to species if their host plant was unique. I came across a few other distinctive species that I recognized along the way. For the rest, I'm envisioning making an article that organizes aphid images by host plant, so when we learn new species it will be easy to find the ones that match (for instance, we have several images of an unidentified red species on tomato plants). I'm not using any one source, but a combination of several books and googling "aphid" + whatever the host plant is. It's possible some IDs will have to be adjusted later on--for instance, if I come across another powdery-looking species that feeds on Brassicaceae, I'll move this image to whatever the common denominator is.

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