Abstract
Toxoptera aurantii (Boyer de Fonscolombe) is an aphid pest of great agricultural importance, not only due to its polyphagy but mostly due to its ability to transmit various plant viruses e.g. Citrus tristeza virus on Citrus (Blackman & Eastop, 2000).Blackman & Eastop (2000) considered this aphid to be entirely anholocyclic, because no sexual morphs have ever been observed in the field. However, two alate males collected on Citrus in Palestine, December 1935 (15.xii.—letter dated) (F.S. Bodenheimer), are present in the collections at The Natural History Museum, London (Blackman & Eastop, 2010), and more recently the first oviparous female was collected from the field in an aphid sample collected on Sambucus nigra in Malta (Valletta, Floriana Argotti Garden) on 4.xii.2008 (leg. A. Tabone). The oviparous female is deposited in the aphidologiqal collection of the University of Leon, Spain (sample Malta-707).
NSTL