Ants' Cows

All over Ohio armies of men & women.

armed with spray guns and nicotine sul phate, sallied into the tomato and potato fields. Last week, thanks to their deter mined attack and the arrival of hot weather, it looked as if Ohio and its neighboring states had succeeded in repelling the worst invasion of aphids since 1918.

Nature had made it a big aphid year.

The long, cool, wet spring favored aphid reproduction and killed off many of its natural enemies (notably ladybugs). The aphid, or plant louse, a squashy insect usually about the size of a pinhead, is not rated as a big-league pest in the U.S. But its Ohio holiday was only a sample of what the aphid might do if it were let alone. If all her offspring lived, a single female could girdle the earth with her progeny in a single season.

The aphid, feeding on leaf juices, secretes a sweet liquid called "honey-dew" to which ants are very partial. Some varie ties of ants keep herds of aphids, like cows, and milk them by stroking the abdomen gently with their antennae; a well-fed aphid may yield 48 drops of "milk" a day.

In return, ants carry aphids to good pastures, feed them, guard their eggs, fight off their enemies. Even so, aphid mortality is very high. Only its prodigious birthrate enables the species to survive.

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