I have some beautiful roses in my garden; when you're walking by, you see their beauty; but when you look very, very close this is what you see on the flower stem: aphids ! these aphids are only 1-2 mm long........................
The sex life (or non-sex life) of the aphid is one of their most unusual features. Some aphids reproduce sexually, some reproduce asexually and some use both methods of reproduction depending on their environment. With asexual reproduction, females can either give birth to live clones or lay eggs, all without a male aphid.
For the aphids that do involve a male, it gets a little more complicated, but also more interesting. After laying eggs or creating clones, the new females are able to produce copies of themselves as well. When the weather heats up, some of the eggs hatch into males. When the males are sexually mature, they can mate with the female aphid, who then produces eggs that will survive over the winter and hatch into more aphids.