5 Plant Eating Pests
Many insects eat plants; a handful of those insects are also household pests. Phytogagy (‘fight-oh- fage-E’) insects are those that eat plants and they can be very destructive. This article focuses on five types of phytophagous insects that are also pests around your home.
- Grasshoppers and Locusts: Locusts are a big problem. They are very large grasshoppers that swarm. When they do, they can consume whole crops in a single day. Around your house a few grasshoppers do little damage, but during the spring and summer they tend to multiply and devour plants, gardens, and flowers.
- Aphids: Aphids are small insects that use needle-like mouths to suck the juices from plants. If you have a garden, you’ve probably seen aphids in your broccoli or cauliflower or other vegetables. Aphids are hemipterans, and this is a very large order of insects most of which feed on plants. It includes stink bugs, box elders, and Japanese Box Elders, and others.
- Chinch Bugs: Chinch bugs are also hemipterans and these are a horrible pest that can destroy your lawn. They live in the thatch, and when they stab the grass shoot to suck its sap, they transfer bacteria to the blade of grass which then chokes the grass, and it dies. The more they feed, the more your lawn dies.
- Cutworms: Cutworms are moth larvae and one type of caterpillar that significantly damages lawns, gardens, flowers, and shrubs. There are many types of caterpillars around Bryan, Texas, and some are quite large. The Tobacco Horn Worm and the Tomato Horn Worm do significant damage to grapes, tomatoes, and other vines.
- Leaf Cutter Ants: In Texas, there is Atta texana; the Texas Leaf Cutter Ant. These ants are actually pretty amazing, but they damage many crops and gardens. They harvest sections of leaves and cart them back to their colony. There they prepare the greens as a growing medium on which they grow a specific type of fungus which they eat. These little guys are farmers.
These five types of plant eaters cause a lot of damage around Texas. If something is eating your garden, killing your lawn, or destroying the trees and shrubs in your yard, give us a call. We specialize in pest diagnostics and the safe and effective removal of household pest.
