Common Green Lacewing

• Only the larva is predatory: the adult feeds on pollen, nectar and the honeydew excreted by aphids.
• A single larva can eat between 200 and 400 aphids during its development, and when prey is scarce it turns to cannibalism.
• The stalk of the egg exists for precisely that reason: it holds the egg away from the leaf and out of reach of its own newly hatched sisters.
• Only the larva is predatory: it is called the aphid lion and pierces its prey with its mandibles to drain it. The adult does not hunt; it eats pollen, nectar and honeydew.
• One larva can get through hundreds of aphids, and it also eats whiteflies, spider mites, thrips, moth eggs and scale insects.
• It is sold as biological control, usually as eggs mixed with rice husks for scattering through the crop.
• It competes with other aphid predators: in intraguild predation trials the lacewing larva usually beats ladybirds.
• What is known as Chrysoperla carnea is in fact a complex of cryptic species told apart by their vibrational courtship song.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat & environment

Cosmopolitan except in the coldest zones: farmland, urban allotments, gardens and open country, above all where flowering plants are abundant, since the adults feed on nectar and pollen

Sexual maturity

The full cycle from egg to adult takes two to three weeks at 25 °C, with three generations a year under natural conditions

Gestation / incubation

The larvae emerge three to six days after the eggs are laid

Litter / clutch size

About 20 eggs a day, each on the end of a long stalk, laid near aphid colonies

Sources consulted: Koppert; Bioline Iberia; Solagro; Campos (estudios en olivar del sur de España); Medina, Budia, Vogt, Del Estal y Viñuela (controlbiologico.info); Cannabis Magazine (revisión de crisópidos ibéricos)

Best time: From spring to summer; it overwinters as a pupa, usually in the leaf litter near crops