B4
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2021
A scientist in search of tiny insects
while he worked at the sta-
tion during the summers.
Jensen has a doctorate in
aphid systematics. He hoped
to pursue aphid studies pro-
fessionally, but couldn’t fi nd
a job at a university, state
agency or the U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture .
“Aphids became a hobby
at that point,” he said.
While working for Reed,
Jensen noticed that aphids
on the plants cascara and
bracken fern, thought to be
separate species, looked
quite similar.
“A little concerted eff ort
showed they were the same,”
Jensen said. “I was hooked
on problem-solving aphids.”
When Reed died in 2015,
Jensen named an aphid spe-
cies, Macrosiphum garyreed,
after him.
Jensen is on the
hunt for aphids
By MATTHEW
WEAVER
Capital Press
Andy Jensen just might
be the only person in North
America with his particular
hobby.
By day, Jensen is the
go-between for farmers and
researchers as manager of the
Northwest Potato Research
Consortium, funded by the
Idaho, Oregon and Washing-
ton potato commissions.
After
work,
Jensen
devotes about 10 hours a
week to aphids, the insects
best known to farmers as
pests.
He searches for them
through mountains, valleys
and farm fi elds.
Jensen estimates he’s
traveled 120,000 miles,
including two trips to Europe
and 8,000 driving miles each
year for the past 12 years, in
pursuit of his passion.
“My aphid work is an
all-consuming hobby,” he
said.
But it is also serious
science.
Some aphids are well-
known to farmers and
researchers for the role they
play in spreading plant dis-
eases, but many are a bene-
fi cial part of the insect food
chain. What’s remarkable is
that so little is known about
some of them.
From the discovery of a
new aphid species to publi-
cation in a scientifi c journal
can take seven to 10 years.
Jensen has participated in
scientifi cally describing 26
new species of aphids over
the last two decades.
None of the new aphids
Jensen has described are
agricultural pests. They tend
to be found in natural habi-
tats, not agricultural fi elds.
His exuberance for the
tiny insects shines through
his reserved demeanor. He’ll
enthusiastically
describe
the complexity of puz-
zling through aphid species
descriptions from the 1800s
— and how many people
can actually say they have a
favorite aphid?
“A lot of the species I’ve
described, no one else has
seen before until I’ve dis-
covered them,” he said.
Huge collection
Jensen’s aphid collection
consists of more than 12,400
slides and at least 35,000
specimens of 623 species.
He pays for all of his aphid
expeditions, according to his
website, AphidTrek.org.
Describing aphids is a
specialized area of ento-
mology. Other aphid spe-
cialists around the region
By any other name
Gina Rone
Andy Jensen collects aphids as a hobby and passion.
are focused on molecu-
lar biology and evolution-
ary patterns. The research-
ers describing new insects
are mostly in eastern Europe
and the Middle East.
Other people might have
known about some of the
aphids Jensen has described,
but perhaps didn’t have
enough material beyond one
sample in a museum.
When a new aphid is dis-
covered, researchers turn to
him.
“Certainly in our region,
there’s nobody like Dr. Jen-
sen,” said Sanford Eigen-
brode, a University of Idaho
entomology professor who
oversees the aphid monitor-
ing system for the Legume
Virus Project. “He doesn’t
do the work on aphids pro-
fessionally, even though he’s
a high-caliber scientist.”
Farmers are unlikely to
come across an undiscov-
ered aphid in their fi elds.
“You’ve got to do a lot
of hiking to fi nd something
that’s new,” Jensen said.
Jensen is most intrigued
by the aphids that migrate
from one host plant or hab-
itat to another. One species
lives in the forest on a snow-
berry bush during the win-
ter, then moves to the high
mountains on a knotweed
plant among granite boul-
ders during the summer.
“Discovering that kind of
thing is really, really fun,” he
said.
He’s particularly inter-
ested in atypical aphids —
those found only in small
numbers.
Many aphids completely
cover the stems of plants —
“you just can’t miss them,”
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Jensen said — but research-
ers have to look pretty hard
to see a lot of other aphids.
For example, poverty
weed, which tends to grow
on roadsides and in aban-
doned fi elds, appears to host
two unique previously unde-
scribed aphids.
“Nobody in the world
apparently is aware of
these,” Jensen said. “There
are hardly any specimens on
these plants and you have to
tap on the plants with a board
or a sheet to fi nd them. But
it’s a super-common weed
across most of the western
half of the continent.”
Managing aphids
Neither Jensen nor Eigen-
brode have an estimate for
the total cost of aphid-trans-
mitted viruses to farm pro-
duction, but “it would be a
very large number,” Jensen
said.
Generally, Jensen advises
farmers who fi nd aphids on
the fi elds to wait several
weeks and see if they go
away on their own. Aphids
often decline naturally in the
heat of summer.
But it’s a diff erent story
for seed potato produc-
ers, who must limit seed-
borne pathogens, espe-
cially viruses. As vectors of
viruses, aphids should be
“aggressively
managed,”
Jensen said.
But he warned that con-
trolling aphids can be
vexing.
“Trying to control aphids
with a lot of diff erent pesti-
cides will just lead to more
aphids, because you’ve
killed some of the aphids
and you’ve killed almost all
of everything else, and you
just end up with more aphids
than you had to begin with,”
Jensen said.
“Aphids are considered
the corn fl akes of the insect
world, or whatever your
favorite food is,” Jensen said
with a laugh. “If you picture
your favorite food, aphids
are that favorite food for the
insect world.”
Aphids support a huge
diversity of benefi cial pred-
ators and parasites, par-
ticularly lady beetles, or
ladybugs.
Aphids transmit viruses,
which is generally consid-
ered a negative. But not all
viruses are bad, Jensen said.
They can introduce new
genetic material into what-
ever they’re infecting, which
can sometimes be a positive.
Aphids are a crucial part
of an extremely complex
ecosystem, in their interac-
tions with plants, insects,
microbes and predators up to
birds and mammals, he said.
“Ultimately, we’re all a
part of the food chain, and
we’re important because of
that,” Jensen said.
Much to discover
Aphids are most diverse
in northern temperate cli-
mates, Jensen said. Only a
couple hundred species are
native to the Southern Hemi-
sphere, and the other 5,000-
plus species are in the North-
ern Hemisphere.
With most aphid taxon-
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omy researchers based in
Colorado, Utah and New
Mexico, the Rockies were
well-explored,
but
the
Northwest was less studied
until the early 1990s, Jensen
said.
“For most people who
don’t spend a lot of time hik-
ing and camping, almost all
my aphids are in unusual
places,” Jensen said.
The aphid that lives in
the most extreme habitat
is probably Acyrthosiphon
rockspirea, he said. It lives
many places, but especially
likes high-elevation rocky
slopes and boulder fi elds.
“The diversity is very
great,” Jensen said. “There is
so much to discover for the
fi rst time.”
Gary Reed, the superin-
tendent of Oregon State Uni-
versity’s Hermiston research
station, handed Jensen aphid
samples, traps, a book and a
microscope on his fi rst day
at his summer job as a col-
lege student.
Reed was studying potato
leafroll virus and p otato
virus Y and needed to know
which aphids were in the
traps and which were on the
plants.
It was a test, Jensen said.
“‘If you can fi gure this
out, you’ll be useful to me
and if you can’t, you won’t
be so useful to me and
maybe you’ll do something
else,’” he recalled. “And I
just happened to be good at
it.”
Within a few years, Reed
off ered to support Jensen
through graduate school,
Describing a newfound
aphid also involves naming
it.
“You have to come up
with a new name, it has to
have never been used before,
the genus and species com-
bination, and be something
sort of unique that proba-
bly other people won’t be
tempted to use in the future,”
Jensen said.
At fi rst, Jensen named
aphids after the plant host
they used, or after the habitat.
More recently, he’s begun
naming aphids after other
things. “I name them after
people, plants and places,”
Jensen said.
Jensen’s partner, Gina
Rone, works for the U.S.
Forest Service. She is a huge
supporter of his hobby, serv-
ing as navigator and scout
for good sites, sharing cook-
ing and campsite chores, and
patiently waiting for Jensen
on the trail when he stops to
collect aphids.
The Astoria City Council
wishes everyone a
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