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Project Noah Nature School
Icerya purchasi
A beautiful red adult female Scale (Homoptera) with white waxy secretions which doubles her overall size. The waxy folds also allow her to conceal and protect her eggs underneath her body and the wax strings along the front side of the scale even look like legs. This one is especially nice because the body of the scale is completely visible. More often, they are buried in wax. The drop of clear liquid is an excretion of "honey dew" from the back of the scale. Because of these sweet secretions, they are often attended and protected by ants. This scale is about 5mm long. Family Monophelebidae.
Found on a twig of a Manzanita Tree, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, 2,400 meters. These infestations can escalate into a major problem for the host plant. See this advanced infestation in a previous spotting: http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/174....
"It turns out that females in these hermaphrodite insects are not really fertilizing their eggs themselves, but instead are having this done by a parasitic tissue that infects them at birth,' says Laura Ross of Oxford University's Department of Zoology. ‘It seems that this infectious tissue derives from left-over sperm from their father, who has found a sneaky way of having more children by mating with his daughters." (from Wikipedia).
Thank you Mark, Antonio and Felix :).
Mark, I had to look up your Rodolia cardinalis! I saw it was imported into California in 1988 for use against the Cottony Cushion Scale in the Citrus Orchards. I hope it gets down here soon! Pretty beetle too!
Thank you Daniele and Project Noah for Spotting of the Day, it is always an honor and a pleasure. Daniele, I was gone for a while traveling and working, glad to be back too, Thank you.
Awesome series Lauren,congrats on the well deserved SOTD and thanks for sharing
Congratulations Lauren! This amazing series packed with great information has earned you a Spotting of the Day!
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Thank you Mark, Australia definitely made its mark on the world with these!
Thanks Felix, Hema and Halley. Hema, I'm not sure about your spotting, maybe some other species of scale....the body is different.
wow!!! no idea what it is hahah looks so other worldly and beautiful
Sorry about those. Cottony cushion scale (Icerya purchasi)
I think they were taken rather than we sent them though. They sure seem to like other-world plants. http://bugguide.net/node/view/754009
Spotted on Apr 3, 2017
Submitted on Jun 21, 2017
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