Part V, The Green Lacewing

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Chrysopidae often lay their eggs close to aphid infestations. Then, when the young lacewings emerge, their first meal is close by! Don't be alarmed by the sudden appearance of these larvae in your garden. They bring much more good than harm!

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In this installment of our seriesdesigned to help you tell from foe in your garden, you'll learn about avid
aphid-eaters that gobble pests at an astounding rate

THE BACKYARD JUNGLE:

What are those delicate insects with beautiful netlike wings and brilliant eyes that you see fluttering around the porch light on warm evenings? In all probability, they're green lacewings (Chrysopidae), often called stink flies because of the repellent odor the adults of some species emit when handled. But never mind how they smell: Next to ladybird beetles, these gardener's helpers are the major predators of those leaf-loving pests, aphids!

Like butterflies, lacewings undergo a complete metamorphosis as they mature, and as adults they subsist mainly on a highcarbohydrate diet of pollen and nectar (although some do feed on other insects). It's in their larval stage that they're predaceous, primarily stalking aphids. Unlike their flighty parents, the wingless young tend to forage in the vicinity where they hatched, preying on the local pest population . . . so they're welcome guests in any flower or vegetable plot.

A lacewing larva consumes its prey by sucking out. its victim's fluids with hollow, tusklike jaws and can do away with as many as a hundred aphids a day, rounding out its menu with mites, thrips, young caterpillars, and other harmful insects. So voracious are young lacewings that they'd probably polish off one another . . . if nature hadn't devised a crafty system to quash their cannibalistic tendencies. The female adult often lays her eggs one after another in a straight line, but she places each at the tip of a long, slender thread made from body fluids secreted from her abdomen. This arrangement effectively separates the ova, so that the newly hatched young are discouraged from gobbling up their siblings. The setup also prevents ants and other insect predators from reaching the eggs before the larvae emerge.

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