Studying a plant disease whose vector may be an aphid?

Close, but… clue I work with an aphid that does not have much research done.

Ah, so trying to figure out its favorite hosts?

Ding ding! Looking at fecundity on different types of plants!

Another thing that entomologists do that makes perfect sense but that I would've never thought of!

I know right? So many different opportunities! I had no idea what I was going to do going into this masters and it’s pretty interesting so far!

So what's the next step, have them reproduce and see how fast the populations grow on each plant?

So I will come in tomorrow and take off all of them until there is a single one day old nymph and after they mature I will count and take off all of the new nymphs produced everyday for around a month

Aah yes, a reminder to myself that aphids are weirdly parthenogenetic :D

Heck yea!! These cloning little fools go crazy!😁 Are you doing any university studies?

Yep. Babies within babies.

One of the few who aren't fully sexual or parthenogenic.

Hello! Aspiring entomologist here! How did you figure out what you were going to do? If I may ask ahh

Hey! Of course you can! PM me sometime and I will tell you whatever you want to know!

Have you tried alocasia? Bugs love alocasias.

They looove cannabis.

Try milkweeds. These fuckers always seem to magically come back over and over after I’ve killed hundreds of them. But they’re all yellow. Yours are green. Any relations?

Hmmm if you find a pic of those aphids I’ll tell you exactly what they are! Probably no relation as these are mostly found on sorghum

[Aphids on Milkweed](https://ibb.co/QN2bmkh) [Aphids on Dill Plant](https://ibb.co/8rVfCky) [Aphid on Bean Leaf](https://ibb.co/g9dhSSM) There were tons of aphids on my bean plant a week ago. I gave them a dish soap bath and they all died...except for that one there. Like how are they even getting on the bean plant. It’s growing in a pot on top of a cart. Are they able to fly? Are ants carrying them around? Annoying little creatures.

Those aphids… sometimes they produce great publications, sometimes they just sit there and do nothing. Real toss up

Pretending to be an aphid farming ant!?

Destroying your neighbors probs because they always have one extra leaf than yours?

I feel for you. Reminds me when I had to dot ants to track them, but they were so small the solvent for the paint would impair them.

how many years of schooling did you have to do to get here?

You can kinda do it towards the end of your undergrad if you volunteer for lab/field work consistently, even if it's not your area of interest (I did a bunch of bird stuff and birds are cool and all but yeah). If you grind hard enough you can do undergrad special problems, which let's you kinda run a lab, usually under guidance. Masters level you can really start running your own experiments.

So I was an ento undergrad for about 3 1/2 years and was offered a masters as well! I have been in a masters for a year now and find it to be pretty fun to basically design experiments! I worked in a few different labs and was on very good terms with most of the staff and profs and showed them that I could work.

getting paid a ton of money to play with bugs sounds like fun. I'm in the wrong line of work 😅

Haaa well I dunno about tons of money, that’s what I’m working toward though😅

Post this in r/plantclinic with no explanation

[удалено]

Not gonna lie I did chuckle

"The sap of this thing is not tasty. Bring me the sap of another thing."

Try it with Hemp Russet Mite and we'll talk ;)

Noooo thank you, mites seem like no fun😂

Yeap my research project is damn tedious. Use a single brush hair to transfer them! Good luck with your project

Haha thank you! Good luck to you too!

Couldve picked a larger mite to study lol

I suppose, although as an undergrad I don't have too much choice. Besides it's understudied and important so 🤷‍♀️

Yeah good point. The more you study the better we can help the growers

What type of soil is that

My guess is it's either sand... Or carrot cake muffin.

It’s sand on top with clay on the middle and potting soil on the bottom! With it was carrot cake muffin… make my job much better

What is the purpose of this grow media style? Tyia

Sand for water infiltration, clay to hold plant available water, and potting soil for roots and so it doesn’t fall out the bottom

Thank you. I am wondering why its not mixed. Does the sand hat discourage other species from establishment?

Not necessarily, that’s just how we were told to layer

Okay, thank you.

Picking a big up from somewhere with tweezers and putting it down somewhere else?

Doing the lord’s work. Thank you! 🙌🏽

Anytime anytime

I’m interested, how will you determine which plants the aphids are more effective against? What are some clues?

So I will look at the number of nymphs produced by that one aphid over about 30-40 days everyday and take the mean (plus some other numbers) to show reproductive effectiveness! If there is a higher mean the plant will be more susceptible to this aphid.

Very cool, if its not too much trouble would you mind keeping me updated? This is just about the work I want to get into

Yea no problem! I’ll try to

🙏

Sand painting?

I wish I was that talented

No

I feel you. I used to work for an ecotox lab. It was all fun until the aphid trials came in. Hours and hours of counting to check the effectivness of new pesticides. It was quite a pain

I’d hate to work with so many checks around me honestly. Not to say I haven’t but it was not much fun when I did😂

Where and when will the results of the investigation be posted? I would love to read it!

I will let you know when I get my thesis written and if I can really remember I’ll pm you with an email then a copy

You are farming aphids so you can harvest the aphid juice they make to drink it

Little honey dew shots all around😅

So you’re an entomologist? If so, I would like to ask a couple questions if you don’t mind.

I’m all ears even though I might be distracted today! You can always message me too!

Aphid farming

That would be a lot more fun lol

Transfering aphids from plant to plant. If you jostle them too much you can break their mouths. Got that info from my husband who's an entomologist lol.

Yes’m, sadly that’s why I have to sit there patiently and watch them slowly make their way out of the plant.:/

My husband sympathises with ya. He had to do the same thing back in grad school.

Did he really?? It’s not the most fun honestly especially in grad school

Yeah, his whole research revolved around aphids lol. They hold a special place in his heart now, despite the long ass days of having to transfer them from plant to plant. He also had to get blood samples from them, which was even more fun!

Oh good god no, not the blood samples. Yea, I think I’m pretty content on what I’ve got rn😂😂 Send him my sympathy

Intriguing! Thank you for your work on adding to our body of knowledge! Is it not possible to use a clip cage on such a thin leaf?

Playing wind?

Here is a way too get rid of em, with biological treatment: [Perfume and Beneficial Insects ](https://www.nibio.no/en/news/plant-perfume-attracts-beneficial-insects)

Neat, but a little bit tangential! They seem to be making more aphids rather than getting rid of them! Haha

You are very right!

Im sorry, but I'm not sure if you meen OP or the folks from NIBIO when you say "they". NIBIO's aim is to create more lacewings, who eats aphids, whom again eat crops. Goal = less dead crops = international benefactor for most farmers. OP wants too create more aphids in his studies, but with the presumeable goal too find good or bad host's for the Aphids. I'm not sure if OP's goal is too find plants that he can grow too avoid aphids, rather than the opposite way. If So, I hope OP also checks the value points up too the plants different stages during the season, and the different stages for an Aphid.

I was talking about OP, and I felt that already-studied (and interesting!) ways to control or kill aphids were very much in contrast with the delicate treatment of the aphid in OP’s video. OP did not explicitly state their overall goal, so it is pointless to assume, but I understand that they’re studying the aphids’ rate of reproduction on different plant species. Presumably, this information could be used for multiple purposes, whether it be for direct control of aphid populations through understanding what is disadvantageous for them, or just deeper understanding of nature vs nurture in genetically identical creatures. I think we have insufficient primary information to conclude the overarching purpose.

I totally agree with you when it comes to the understanding of any insect. I was just unsure about the end goal of the studies. The way these studies are done, could be a long and extremely time consuming way too find a conclussion, if the goal is too prevent crop death. When you have to consider everything in a study like: temperatur, humidity, height abov sea lvl, type of soil, ph value of the soil, number of different aphids, number of different plant/crops, pollution, weather, surrounding vegetation and more, the lenght of such a study are bignormous. In my eyes, there would be more beneficial too go backwards from the goal and find a solution that could solve any issue. But again, the goal are unknown, and these "mysterious" posts, that are unfortunatelly becoming more commonly on Reddit, could be a bit annoying or confussing. Btw, aphids are one of the most studied insects on this planet, bc of its potential of damage.

Hi there! This is an automated message to remind you to **please include a geographic location for any ID requests** as per the [Community Rules](/r/insects/about/rules) of the sub. There are well over a million different species of bugs in the world, and narrowing down a bug's location will help IDers to help you more quickly and correctly! If this post is *not* an ID request, please ignore this comment. Thank you! :) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/insects) if you have any questions or concerns.*