A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Lobimago sp.
This soft scale looked like a 5 mm long and wide, slightly raised peach-coloured patch on a leaf. The leaf surface surrounding it was damaged. faint body segments could be seen on the upper surface which had wispy white waxy secretions. The underside (pic 1) showed three pairs of legs, a slight depression between the first pair of legs ( ? mouth) and well defined abdominal segments. A pair of antennae were visible when the scale was turned over.
Spotted on a eucalyptus tree in a reserve. Several leaves were affected by these scale but there was no more than one per leaf.
Occurrence record:
http://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:b...
There was a small winged insect flying around and I wondered if it was the male of the species. Must look for him another time.
I could pick the scale off the leaf and when placed on its back it started arching backwards (pic 4). The underside of the leaf was damaged as well.
These soft scales belong to the suborder Strenorrhyncha where Sterno- refers to the thorax and rhyncha- to snout/mouth. These insects have their mouth opening between the first pair of legs, in the thorax and on the underside of the body.
Interesting information on these hemipterans:
http://what-when-how.com/insects/sternor...
Order: Hemiptera
Suborder: Sternnorrhyncha
Superfamily: Coccoidea
Family Eriococcidae
My thanks to Dr Lyn Cook for the ID, comments and reference material.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11...
Thanks very much for looking at this - for the ID and information Dr.Cook.
Was in genus Lachnodius but transferred to Lobimago by Hardy et al in 2011.
Nice female!
Spotted on Oct 17, 2015
Submitted on Oct 17, 2015
