Greetings fellow Foxies,

Last April I was wandering through Foxes Lair in the evening when my eyes espied a glowing jam wattle. I raced over hoping that it was a sign like a burning bush, to find the stems completely covered by a gleaming white mass. Close examination revealed a mass of gleaming white tubes and balls, interspersed by what looked like gross engorged ticks.
Gadzooks, it was an invader from the east! Cryptes baccatus/Wattle Tick scale
Wattle tick scale occur in eastern Australia, South Australia and the Perth region of Western Australia, feeding on acacias such as black wattle (A. mearnsii), Sydney golden wattle (A. longifolia), hickory wattle (A. implexa) and blackwood (A. melanoxylon).
Globular in shape,  and resembling an engorged tick, wattle tick scale can be up to 7mm in diameter. Initially the scale are a whitish colour, turning dark brown as they age. The adult males, which are small winged creatures, are seldom seen. Feeding scale produce honeydew which attracts ants that disrupt the activities of natural enemies.

The images below show all stages of the life cycle. Small reddish oval insects are crawlers (babies) that wander to a suitable spot to start sucking the plant (head down, bum up). They lose their legs and develop a tubular waxy coat that is open at the end so ants can get honeydew that they excrete. After an adult male has mated with it, the pregnant female swells up and, turns brown, dies and releases crawlers for the next season.
Although they are interesting natural insects, I hope that they don’t spread here. They clearly have an obesity problem.

Did you realise that scales are inter-related with mealybugs and psyllids, and that it is very easy to confuse them.
If you share my interest in these critters 
read this

Greetings fellow Foxies,
 Have you noticed large numbers of dead leaves on local wandoos, particularly where a whole twig or small branch has died?
This condition where wandoos die back and leave dead branches projecting though the leaf canopy is called Wandoo Crown Decline. This is a cyclical problem that caused huge damage in the 1990’s when the Wandoo Recovery Group was formed.
Research showed that boring insects and associated pathogenic fungi, are the principal agents disrupting stem nutrient and water conducting channels. Symptoms are worse in dry autumns, but underlying factors driving the long term cycle are unresolved.
This autumn I couldn’t find any pattern of areas affected. There are a couple of monitoring sites in Foxes Lair that don’t appear to have a lot of very recent damage. Affected trees in Foxes Lair seem to be randomly distributed, but badly affected ones have obviously been repeatedly attacked.
Being a loyal citizen scientist, I nipped out and sampled a couple of branches from a badly affected tree for close analysis.
My first observation was that the branches were distorted and gangly with lots of dead lower shoots, stems with dark cankers (sunken dead lesions) and resprouting shoots. Clearly not a single year problem.
Looking closely, it was amazing to see so many things attacking the tree. I found stem and leaf galls, and leaf damage from a range of chewing insects, but the real cause of branch death is inside the stems.

The insect involved is a jewel beetle Cisseis fascigera). Beetles emerge from November to February, mate and lay eggs on stems. The larva that looks like a witchetty grub chews tissue and wood inside and along the stems (longitudinal galleries), before pupating in its gallery and emerging a year later.
Unfortunately the insect introduces spores of rot fungi that spread through the stem.