The aphis is furnished with an inflected beak, and with feelers longer than the thorax. In the same species, some individuals have four erect wings, and others are entirely without wings.
The feet are of the ambulatory kind, and the belly usually ends in two horns, from which is ejected the substance called honey-dew. The species are very numerous.
2. A genus of insects belonging to the order Hemiptera and family Aphidae, including numerous species known as plant lice and green flies.Besides the true males and females, there is a race of wingless asexual individuals which have the power of producing living young in rapid succession, and these in turn may produce others of the same kind for several generations, before sexual individuals appear.
They suck the sap of plants by means of a tubular proboscis, and owing to the wonderful rapidity of their reproduction become very destructive to vegetation. Many of the Aphidae excrete honeydew from two tubes near the end of the body.