Jumping Plant Lice: The Fastest Front-Flipping Insects
Jumping plant lice, or psyllids, are the fastest front-flipping insects, but not many people know about how amazing they are! I set out to film the high-flying flips of these plant-feeding, often thought of as “pest”, insects. They are hemipterans in the superfamily Psylloidea and are often referred to as “psyllids”. Most of the shots, unless other with labeled in the video, were captured at 3,200 frames per second.
If you want to read more about how they jump, the research study I mentioned in the video is this:
Jumping mechanisms in jumping plant lice (Hemiptera, Sternorrhyncha, Psyllidae) by M. Burrows (2012) Journal of Experimental Biology 215: 3612-3621; doi: 10.1242/jeb.074682
https://jeb.biologists.org/content/21...
Psyllid species in this video, in order of appearance:
Hop-hornbeam psyllid, adults (Psylla carpinicola): https://bugguide.net/node/view/1075793
Persimmon Psyllid, adults and nymphs (Baeoalitriozus diospyri): https://bugguide.net/node/view/1031868
Yaupon Psyllid, nymphs only (Gyropsylla ilecis): https://bugguide.net/node/view/1092265
All collected from Raleigh and Cary, NC. September, 2020. Special thanks to Matt Bertone for help collecting and identifying these insects! Check out his incredible insect macro photography here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/7679027...
And follow him on Twitter, here: / bertonemyia
Music by https://www.soundofpicture.com/