the.com/lacewing
a gossamer assassin whose babies eat their body weight in aphids before lunch
means A delicate, slender-bodied insect with large, transparent, net-veined wings, whose larvae are voracious predators of aphids and other small pests.
from A plain English compound: "lace" + "wing," naming the insect for its finely veined, gauzy wings that look like lacework held up to the light. "Lace" traces back through Old French "las" (a cord or snare) to Latin "laqueus," a noose — the same root that gives us "lasso." The name is descriptive and relatively modern, the kind of tidy label a naturalist pins on a creature once they've actually looked at it closely.
- larva nickname
- called aphid lions for their ruthless appetite
- camouflage
- larvae wear the corpses of their prey as armor
- hearing
- ears detect bat sonar, triggering midair dive escapes
- eggs
- laid on silk stalks to deter cannibal siblings
- farmer ally
- sold by the thousands as living pesticide
chrysoperla carnea — green lacewing species found across europe and asia, used commercially for biological pest control since the 1970s
chrysopidae family — contains over 2,000 species of lacewings, predatory insects that consume aphids and other crop pests