A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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treehopper
A treehopper is a small sap-sucking insect whose upper thorax has grown into an extraordinary structure: a thorn, a hook, a set of spheres on a stalk, a spike, a shape resembling an ant, a wasp, or a piece of dead plant. Over three thousand species exist and the variety of these ornaments has no parallel among insects. They feed on stems, jump powerfully, and many are tended by ants for the sugar they excrete.
Etymology
The English name is for the jumping and the habitat, and the thorn-shaped species are also called thorn bugs. The Latin family name is Greek for something like a crested one, which is the only reasonable summary available given what the group looks like.
Notes
The structure is called the pronotum and how it evolved has been argued over hard. Some treehoppers are almost perfect mimics of the thorns on the plant they sit on, so a stem appears to be armed and is not; others mimic ants or wasps. Many species communicate through vibrations sent along the plant stem, and mothers of some species guard their eggs and drum a warning that brings the young to her.