May Gibson, Age 10, Of Cunmor, Va., for her questions .
Does the spittle bag have another name?
The nymph or young spittle bug lives inside a froth of foamy bubbles which is the reason the insect is so named. Its parents are boxy brown insects that hop from leaf to leaf. You may call the spittle bug a froghopper. But all the known animals have been given fancy scientific names and the spittle bug has a scientific name all his own.
The study of insects is called entomology. On his day off., an entomologist may point to a boxy brown insect and tell you it is a spittle bug., alias a froghopper. But when talking with fellow scientists, maybe of other nations., he will call the bouncy bug aphrophora quadrangulus . that is,, if the specimen happens to be the most common variety of spittle bug.
Most of the scientific animal names are coined from dead languages, such as greek and latin. The names usually have a hidden clue to some feature of the animal. They are used by scientists of all nations, and aphrophora quadrangulus is the same insect to an entomologist from france or holland, spain or russia.
Aphrophora, meaning water lover,, is the genus name of our spittle bug. The few insects in this genus enjoy the first weeks of life in a watery froth of bubbles. The larvae are nymphs which grow by molting and finally emerge as brown adults like their parents, an animal also has a species name,, which is his alone. The most common spittle bug is the species quadrangulus, perhaps because the adult is somewhat like a quadrangle. The full. Name gives the genus and the species of an animal.. The genus starts with a capital letter, the species with a small letter aphrophora quadrangulus,
The plural of genus is genera., and a family is a group of several genera. Our Spittle bug and a few close relatives are of the family cercopidae which was named for a long tailed monkey. The nymph spittle bug whips up his foamy froth by lashing his tapered tail.
Several families are grouped in an order. The spittle bugis family is in the order homoptera, the equal winged insects. Cicadas and leaf hoppers., spittle bugs and most homoptera insects have two pairs of similar wings. All of them have long, jointed beaks for sipping sap from tender plants.
Spittle bug foam can be found on tender twigs from coast to coast. If,.you part it gently,, you may find the nymph who created it. The pale green goblin type fellow will be straddled across a green stem and very busy. He is sucking plant sap with his long beak and swishing up foam with his tail. His body oozes a soapy fluid.. And he has a built in pair of miniature bellows to add air which forms the foamy bubbles.