Aphids in focus: unravelling their complex ecology and evolution using genetic and molecular approaches

Overview & Synopsis

In the fields they seem to go off gradually one by one in the heat of the day, heedless of a destination, and like a packet vessel freighted with passengers for different ports; touching and discharging the cargo at intervals, and then anew buoyantly resuming the voyage.' (1850a) ' It thus appears to be impelled through a circuit, and to be ever striving to regain the source whence first it drew the vital stream; like a bird, that, with uncertain aim, has wandered from its home at day-dawn, but directs its way back unerringly, when the tempest lowers, and the shadows of evening thicken.' (1850b) James Hardy (1815-98) describing, respectively, the aerial migration of the grain aphid, Sitobion (= Aphis) avenae, between its spring/summer grass and cereal hosts; and the host alternation of the rose-grain aphid, Metopolophium (= Aphis) dirhodum, migrating in the autumn from its grass and cereal spring/summer hosts to its primary overwintering woody host, rose, and vice versa the following spring.