Long Tailed Mealybug

Description:

Growing on the leaf of a bamboo. Size: Less than 0,3 cm

Habitat:

Brazilian campo rupestre, Serra do Cipó National Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Notes:

This is a sap sucking pest that usually lives in the branch nodes of the bamboo and feeds of the sap of the plant. The excess sap is secreted out the back end of this pest as honeydew. As honeydew is sweet in taste the ants love it and use it as a food source which generally attracts ants. Campos rupestres, species-rich tropical grasslands, are harsh ecosystems established on quartzite-derived soils occurring in altitude between 800m and 2,000m, and covering around 130,000km2. The campos rupestres are constituted of a very heterogeneous mosaic of stony and sandy grasslands, bogs situated along streams, and scattered rocky outcrops that harbour sclerophyllous evergreen shrubs and sub-shrubs