Young aphids, fleeing munching cows, hitch rides on adults
When pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) are fleeing a browsing cow, the tiny ones try to ride the much larger ones to safety: In a lab setup, hitchhiking got very young aphids safely across open ground about four times faster than scrabbling to safety on their own, the researchers found. These newborn aphids, not even 12 hours old, were not just seeking some object to clamber onto. They soon lost interest if presented with beads or dead adults but held on to live grown-up aphids in motion, the researchers report December 6 in Frontiers in Zoology.Susan Milius, “Pea aphid youngsters use piggyback rides to escape a crisis” at ScienceNews Only some adults would let them ride (5% succeeded) and kinship didn’t Read More ›