Aphid Life Cycle

Background

• The aphid is a soft-bodied, plant-eating insect that comes in about 4,400 different species. Most species feed on only a single type of plant. They tend to infest those plants and they can be very destructive. Most aphids only live for about 20 to 40 days.

Spring and Summer

• Aphid eggs hatch on a plant or tree in the spring when the weather begins to warm. All of the hatched larvae will develop into wingless females, who will feed on their host plant.

  Once these females mature, within seven to 10 days, they start to clone themselves, giving birth to smaller, living versions of themselves known as nymphs. A female can give birth to about five to 10 clones per day, creating large swarms. These nymphs mature quickly, molting about four times over seven days before they start producing their own clones within 10 days.

  A swarm of aphids can develop quickly on a plant. If the host plant begins to die, many of the aphids will grow wings and take off. Aphids are unable to fly on their own. They rely on the wind to carry them by their wings and take them to another suitable host plant for feeding.

  Aphids will continue giving birth to multiple cloned generations over the course of the warm months of the spring and summer.

Fall and Winter

• When the weather begins to cool in the fall, some female aphids will spontaneously become males. For the first time that year, male and female aphids will mate sexually. The females will lay eggs toward the end of the fall as the temperature gets too cold for aphids to survive. The eggs will resist the cold and hatch in the spring.

Warmer Climates

• In some warm climates aphids can survive the winter. Since they don't need to lay eggs over the winter to propagate the species, these populations will mostly continue asexual cloning reproduction throughout the year.

Pregnant While Unborn

• Some species of aphids are sometimes born pregnant. A female aphid who is developing as a clone within its mother's body will be pregnant itself and will be developing its own clone within its body even as it is waiting to be born.