Brachycaudus helichrysi
species of insect
Brachycaudus helichrysi is a species of aphid first described by the German naturalist Johann Heinrich Kaltenbach in 1843. Its common names include leaf curl plum aphid, and leaf-curling plum aphid, and it is a serious pest of plum and damson trees.
Description
The viviparous wingless females have an oval or pear-shaped body and grow to a length of up to 2 mm (0.08 in). Early in the season they are brownish but later they are yellowish-green. The antennae are pale green and short, about half the length of the body. There is no dark, shining patch on the dorsal surface of the abdomen, a fact which distinguishes it from the otherwise similar thistle aphid (Brachycaudus cardui). The cauda (tail-like elongation) is bluntly rounded, the legs are pale except for the extremities, and the cornicles are pale-coloured, short and flanged. Winged females range from 1.3 to 1.8 mm (0.05 to 0.07 in) in length and have a blackish head with longer antennae, blackish thorax and a green abdomen with dark spots on the third to sixth segments. The overwintering eggs are black.
Biology
Brachycaudus helichrysi overwinters as fertilised eggs which hatch during the winter or early spring, before the plum and damson trees on which they are laid come into leaf.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Brachycaudus helichrysi” as species of insect. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of insect. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q14086568. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1843.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brachycaudus helichrysi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.