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Icerya

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Icerya
Icerya purchasi, female
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hemiptera
Suborder: Sternorrhyncha
Family: Monophlebidae
Genus: Icerya
Signoret, 1875
Species

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Icerya is a genus of scale insects in the family Monophlebidae. It is named after physician-naturalist Dr. Edmond Icery of British Mauritius.[1]

Hermaphroditism

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Hermaphroditism is extremely rare in the insect world despite the comparatively common nature of this condition in the crustaceans. Several species of Icerya, including the pestiferous cottony-cushion scale, I. purchasi, are known to be hermaphrodites that reproduce by self-fertilising. Occasionally males are produced from unfertilised eggs, but generally individuals are monoecious with a female-like nature but possessing an ovotestis (a part-testis, part-ovary organ) and sperm is transmitted ovarially from the female to her young.[2] The existence of both hermaphrodites and males in a species is known as androdioecy. This hermaphroditic sexual self-sufficiency, where a single individual can populate new territory, has contributed to the invasive spread of the cottony-cushion scale insect away from its native Australia.[3]

List of species

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References

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  1. ^ Sorensen, W. Conner; Smith, Edward H. (2019). "Vedalia the "Wonder Beetle" and Biological Control". Charles Valentine Riley: Founder of Modern Entomology. And Janet R. Smith, with Donald C. Weber. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. p. 221. ISBN 9780817392222.
  2. ^ Normark, Benjamin B. (2003). "The Evolution of Alternative Genetic Systems in Insects". Annual Review of Entomology. 48 (1): 397–423. doi:10.1146/annurev.ento.48.091801.112703. ISSN 0066-4170.
  3. ^ The Insects An outline of Entomology, Gullan & Cranston, Wiley-Blackwell 2001