Any of various small plant-sucking insects.
any of the plant-sucking insects of the family Aphididae.
Any of the family of small insects, Aphididae, in the order Homoptera, that live by sucking sap from plants. There are many species, often adapted to particular plants.
In some stages of their life cycle, wingless females rapidly produce large numbers of live young by parthenogenesis, leading to enormous infestations, and numbers can approach 2 billion per hectare/1 billion per acre. They can also cause damage by transmitting viral diseases. An aphid that damages cypress and cedar trees appeared in Malawi in 1985 and by 1991 was attacking millions of trees in central and E Africa. Some research suggests, however, that aphids may help promote fertility in the soil through the waste they secrete, termed “honeydew”. Aphids are also known as plant lice, greenflies, or blackflies.