APHID PESTS OF MAINE.* 

 Edith M. Patch. 



There are possibilities of control of certain species of plant 

 lice or aphids by such methods as rotation of crops or the 

 destruction of weeds which serve to maintain a species of 

 aphids dangerous to neighboring crops ; or the selection by 

 the landscape gardener of ornamental shrubs and trees which 

 are not susceptible to attacks of aphids common on native 

 vegetation. In some cases circumventing the aphid by means of 

 a knowledge of its food habits and migrations would be simpler 

 and more effective than the direct methods of spraying which 

 need to be repeated each year of attack. 



The ornamental cut leaf maple,, for example, can be made 

 immune from attacks of the woolly aphid common on the leaves 

 of this tree, by the destruction of neighboring alders on which 

 the migrants develop, and infestations of some Chermes galls so 

 troublesome to ornamental spruces could be escaped by omitting 

 the alternate host from the immediate landscape. 



But before advantage can be taken of these methods it is 

 necessary to know the full food plant cycle. It happens of 

 course that many species inhabiting plants of no economic 

 value in themselves may be a distinct form of a species very 

 injurious to a more valuable plant, and an economic review of 

 even a local fauna can not omit the species from any native 

 growth. 



The importance of securing authentic food plant records for 

 the large family of insects under consideration is emphasized 

 by the fact that some species feed exclusively on a single or a 

 few closely allied plants while other have so wide a range that 

 it requires the collections of many years to include them all. 



The reason for treating a local list of aphids with a view of 

 the botanical sequence of the plants they infest is thus apparent 



* Papers from the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station : Ento- 

 mology No. S3. 



