Jumping Plant Louse
genera (see text)
Acizzia
Agonoscena
Allocaridara
Arytainilla
Blastopsylla
Boreioglycaspis
Cacopsylla
Cryptoneossa
Ctenarytaina
Diaphorina
Eucalyptolyma
Euphyllura
Glycaspis
Heteropsylla
Pachypsylla
Prosopidopsylla
Psylla
Psyllopsis
Retroacizzia
Tetragonocephela
and others
Psyllids or jumping plant lice are small plant-feeding insects that tend to be very host specific, i.e. they only feed on one plant species (monophagous) or feed on a few related plants (oligophagous). Together with aphids, phylloxerans, scale insects and whiteflies they form the group called Sternorrhyncha, which is considered to be the most "primitive" group within the true bugs (Hemiptera). They have traditionally been considered a single family, Psyllidae, but recent classifications divide the group into a total of seven families; the present restricted definition still includes more than 70 genera in the Psyllidae.
Psyllid fossils have been found from the early Permian before the flowering plants evolved. The explosive diversification of the flowering plants in the Cretaceous was paralleled by a massive diversification of associated insects, and many of the morphological and metabolic characters that the flowering plants exhibit may have evolved as defenses against herbivorous insects.
Several genera of psyllids, especially among the Australian fauna, secrete coverings called "lerps" over their bodies, presumably to conceal them from predators and parasites.
Read more about Jumping Plant Louse: Coevolution, Status As Pests
Famous quotes containing the words jumping, plant and/or louse:
“We set up a certain aim, and put ourselves of our own will into the power of a certain current. Once having done that, we find ourselves committed to usages and customs which we had not before fully known, but from which we cannot depart without giving up the end which we have chosen. But we have no right, therefore, to claim that we are under the yoke of necessity. We might as well say that the man whom we see struggling vainly in the current of Niagara could not have helped jumping in.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“They do not live in the world,
Are not in time and space.
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place.”
—Edwin Muir (1887–1959)
“A louse in the locks of literature.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)