Word: aphid
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Nature had made it a big aphid year...
...long, cool, wet spring favored aphid reproduction and killed off many of its natural enemies (notably ladybugs). The aphid, or plant louse, a squashy insect usually about the size of a pinhead, is not rated as a big-league pest in the U.S. But its Ohio holiday was only a sample of what the aphid might do if it were let alone. If all her offspring lived, a single female could girdle the earth with her progeny in a single season...
...aphid, feeding on leaf juices, secretes a sweet liquid called "honey-dew" to which ants are very partial. Some varie ties of ants keep herds of aphids, like cows, and milk them by stroking the abdomen gently with their antennae; a well-fed aphid may yield 48 drops of "milk...
...return, ants carry aphids to good pastures, feed them, guard their eggs, fight off their enemies. Even so, aphid mortality is very high. Only its prodigious birthrate enables the species to survive...
Lack of know-how, lack of labor, and a virus carried from plant to plant by an aphid left U.S. growers four or five years away from capturing a $20,000,000-a-year business. Imports of bulbs dropped off even before Pearl Harbor. Reason: the Japanese were eating the vitamin-rich bulbs, as they had done centuries before the West turned their flowers into symbols of the resurrection of the Prince of Peace...