If you stepped outside at all this past fall, you probably saw the swarms of little white bugs looking like the villain in an old sepia-toned horror movie titled ‘The Carnivorous Swarm’ or something equally ridiculous. However, to those familiar with Moscow, they signal the coming of fall.
These bugs are Dusky-Winged Ash Aphids (Prociphilus Americanus). Also known as the Conifer Root Aphid, they are a species of aphid known for hopping between two hosts, a summer host and a winter host.
Sanford Eigenbrode, a professor of entomology here at the University of Idaho, studies pests such as these aphids for a living.
“More than half of the species of aphids are homocyclic,” Eigenbrode said. “They have summer hosts and winter hosts that they go between every year…. These guys have two trees they use. They use fir trees in the summertime, and if you dug around in the roots of the trees you would find them, and they overwinter on ash trees.”
This migration from their summer homes among the fir trees to their winter ones inside the ash is exactly why we see them every fall. During this migration, the aphids gain a waxy coat that allows them to slip out of the sticky sap messes that they nest in. This wax also makes them seem bigger than usual, making them more noticeable to the naked eye.
“They are coming to the ash trees where they will lay eggs and the eggs hatch in the winter and feed on the ash, and then they can move back to the firs,” Eigenbrode said. “We don’t see them coming back [to the firs] but we see them come in almost every year.”
These guys are also not as innocent as they may seem. While they do not inflict significant damage on the UI’s ash trees, they do much more harm to the fir trees they summer on.
“Firs are a very important species for Christmas trees, and these guys can become pests to Christmas tree farming,” Eigenbrode said. “They prevent the trees from growing fast enough to make market size.”
However, Christmas tree farms are not the only place where the small insects seem to be a nuisance. They seem to cake the university windows, streets, and even people’s hair.
Another article by the Argonaut in 2015, has called these flighted annoyances “a societal nuisance”.
Sydney Schoth, a bio-engineering major on campus, once swallowed one, much to her chagrin.
“I breathed it in accidentally.” Schoth said. “I gagged on it, and it tasted salty.”
Other people have had them get stuck in hair and even eyelashes, causing more than one person to find a horrifying dead bug in a place that it should not be.
However, as we enter fully into winter, they seem to be going away.
“I was just talking to a grad student who had one land on her hand a couple days ago,” Eigenbrode said, “But the main swarm is mostly done with. However, for students returning to campus next fall, be on the lookout. They’ll become an old friend.”
Abigail Spencer can be reached at [email protected]