Bug Wiki
Bug Wiki / All bugs / True bugs and cicadas
Sticker of Glassy-winged sharpshooter
Bug card No. 0625 of 1,500

Glassy-winged sharpshooter

Homalodisca vitripennis
Eats: PlantsTrue bugs and cicadasGardens and meadows6 legs

The glassy-winged sharpshooter is a big leafhopper with see-through wings that have reddish veins. Its body is dark brown with yellow speckles and it has yellow eyes. It sucks watery juice from plants and squirts out tiny droplets that people call leafhopper rain.

Lives in
Southeastern United States, and now also California
Length
1.2 cm (0.47 in)
Top speed
about 1.2 km/h (0.75 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people. It is a problem for farmers because it can carry plant diseases.
What does it eat?
It drinks the watery sap from inside more than 70 kinds of plants, like grapes, citrus trees, almonds and oleanders.
For real!Photo of Glassy-winged sharpshooter
Picture by Reyes Garcia III, USDA Agricultural Research Service. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Glassy-winged sharpshooter about 1.2 cm long (0.47 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
as long as 2 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 3 secondsmoves 28 times its own body length every second

How big is Glassy-winged sharpshooter compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Every day it squirts out up to 300 times its own body weight in watery waste.

2

The droplets leave white marks on leaves and fruit, as if they had been painted.

3

The mother covers her eggs with white powder that she stores on her wings.

4

It can carry germs from sick plants to healthy ones, which is bad for grape vines.

5

Tiny wasps lay their eggs inside its eggs, which helps farmers keep it under control.

you asked

Most asked questions about Glassy-winged sharpshooter

?Is the glassy-winged sharpshooter harmful?

Not to people. But it can spread a plant disease that hurts grape vines and fruit trees.

?What is sharpshooter rain?

It is the tiny droplets of watery waste it squirts out while it drinks plant sap.

?How big is the glassy-winged sharpshooter?

It is about 12 millimetres long.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Homalodisca vitripennis
Group
True bugs and cicadas
Family
Cicadellidae
Classification
Insecta > Hemiptera > Cicadellidae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Glassy-winged sharpshooter (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Reyes Garcia III, USDA Agricultural Research Service. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.

More from the same group: True bugs and cicadas

Pharaoh cicadaTrue bugs and cicadasSpotted lanternflyTrue bugs and cicadasBrown marmorated stink bugTrue bugs and cicadasCochinealTrue bugs and cicadasBoxelder bugTrue bugs and cicadasWestern conifer seed bugTrue bugs and cicadas

Also at home here: Gardens and meadows

Evergreen bagwormMothsSpanish slugSnails, slugs and wormsEmperor mothMothsOrange-tipButterfliesNotch-horned clegFlies and mosquitoesNursery web spiderSpiders