Icerya

Icerya
Icerya purchasi
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Hemiptera
Suborder: Sternorrhyncha
Superfamily: Coccoidea
Family: Monophlebidae
Genus: Icerya
Species

See text.

Icerya is a genus of scale insects in the family Monophlebidae.

Hermaphroditism

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, Icerya purchasi, are known to be hermaphrodites that reproduce by self-fertilising. Occasionally reproductively functioning males are produced from unfertilised eggs but generally individuals are monoecious and with a female-like nature but possesing an ovotestis which is part testis part ovary and sperm is transmitted ovarially from the female to her young [1]. 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.[2]

List of species

  1. ^ THE EVOLUTION OF ALTERNATIVE GENETIC SYSTEMS IN INSECTS.
  2. ^ The Insects An outline of Entomology, Gullan & Cranston, Wiley-Blackwell 2001

1 THE EVOLUTION OF ALTERNATIVE GENETIC SYSTEMS IN INSECTS Annual Review of Entomology Vol. 48: 397-423 (Volume publication date January 2003) First published online as a Review in Advance on September 3, 2002 DOI: 10.1146/annurev.ento.48.091801.112703 Benjamin B. Normark