Landcare Research - Manaaki Whenua

Landcare-Research -Manaaki Whenua

FNZ 51 - Coccidae males (Insecta: Hemiptera: Coccoidea) - Adult males introduction

Hodgson, CJ; Henderson, RC 2004. Coccidae (Insecta: Hemiptera: Coccoidea): adult males, pupae and prepupae of indigenous species. Fauna of New Zealand 51, 228 pages.
( ISSN 0111-5383 (print), ; no. 51. ISBN 0-478-09360-8 (print), ). Published 22 Jun 2004
ZooBank: http://zoobank.org/References/85A2C19D-CA28-4C43-9B7C-BABE3D5DFCE8

Adult males, introduction

The adult males of perhaps only about 60 species have previously been described adequately as they are rarely collected and seldom studied. In contrast, the adult females of most of the approximately 1200 species currently known in the family Coccidae have been sufficiently well described to be re-identified.

The importance of the structure of the adult male for a proper understanding of the relationships within the Coccoidea was recognised by Balachowsky (1937) and Ferris (1942, 1950) who considered that no satisfactory system of scale insect classification would be achieved without an understanding of male structure. Although a few earlier workers made some useful contributions, particularly Sulc (1932) and Borchsenius (1957), the first really detailed description of male scale insects (of 7 different taxa but including a male soft scale) was that by Theron (1958), who provided the basis for the modern study of adult male Coccidae. Unfortunately, Theron did not describe the chaetotaxy and pores.

Theron's work was supervised by Dr K. Boratynski of Imperial College, London University, who later instigated three further major studies on coccoid males: Ghauri (1962) who described 26 diaspidid males; Giliomee (1967) who described 23 coccid males, and Afifi (1968) who described 17 pseudococcid and 7 eriococcid males. Giliomee (1967), in his study of soft scale males, noted considerable variation among species and concluded that the resulting classification did not agree with that for the adult females. Whilst a few other soft scale males have been described (Gimpel et al . 1974; Ray & Williams 1980, 1983; Manuwadu 1986; Farrell 1990; Hodgson 1991, 1993; Hodgson & Henderson 1998; Foldi et al. 2001; Hodgson & Martin 2001), the next significant studies were those of Miller (1991) and Miller & Williams (1995, 2002), who described the known adult males of the 31 coccid species from North America. Miller (1991) revised Giliomee's (1967) groupings, and considered (based entirely on male characters) that these males could be divided into seven groups. As far as possible, these groups were then included in a classification of the Coccidae by Hodgson (1994), in which he recognised 10 subfamilies.

We describe the adult males of a further 31 soft scale species, all of which are considered to be indigenous to New Zealand (Hodgson & Henderson 2000).

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