Orange growers despise Asian citrus psyllids, which spread a destructive bacterium.
Instead of these juicy beauties, trees suffering from this “citrus greening” make green, bitter fruit … and eventually die.
So, scientist Nic Irvin, at the University of California, Riverside, has planted alyssum in orange groves to attract oblique streaktails.
Their maggots hunt for psyllids on the orange trees.
But the psyllids have a security detail: Argentine ants.
They feed on the psyllids’ poop.
In exchange, the ants try to keep the maggots away.
But this big one has the upper hand.
It digs its mouthparts in and injects some venom. It even sucks out a little taste, to see if it might want to eat the ant. Nope. It’s really after the psyllids.
Each maggot will devour more than 400 in the week before it turns into a pupa.
And that gluttony means more oranges for you and me.
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