Scale Insects

26/12/2016

Severely sooty mould affected plant

I am amazed at how little I know about the natural world when I delve into what I often think is a simple subject
Like many people, I thought that mealybugs are powdery and scales waxy and didn't know much about psyllids at all. Not so!
Psyllids are commonly seen in lerps (oyster shaped shell of dried honeydew) and in galls. When exposed, the adult females look like a tiny wingless cicada.
Mealybugs and scales are sucking insects (like aphids) that secrete a layer on their body to protect themselves and are immobile or slow moving. They are all slow moving or stationary sucking insects, that excrete honey dew from their anus. Ants attracted to the honeydew harvest this and protect them from predators. (This brings a whole new aspect to the saying "kiss my __" enough said). Excess honeydew secretions that drip down the branch are used by moulds to create a black sooty stain that can be seen on the stem and the ground below the shrub.
What we see on plants are almost all female. The adult male looks like a tiny wasp and only exists to mate. I have met some humans like that but they eat, and also live much longer. Some scales have dispensed with males entirely and produce clones of themselves (parthogenesis). Some reproduce via eggs, others by live birth, to produce mobile young called crawlers. Once it finds a nice spot a crawler develops a coat or 'shell', and some dispense with legs and antennae.
There are few easy rules of thumb to distinguish between them. This article may help.
Mealybugs are flat, oval in shape, and have a powdery coat. They prefer moist warm conditions and are not found in the wheatbelt, where we only find scales.
Scales are very diverse. A few form galls on eucalypts, some look like mealy bugs, some look like "typical" waxy scales, but many have a cottony exterior and strange shapes. Here are three categories:-

Gall-inducing scales (family Eriococcidae genus Eriomorpha), produce galls (small knobby plant growths) in eucalypts Females and males have different shaped galls and the males leave theirs to mate with females. Males have different shaped galls to their female mates. This includes Gumtree scale Eriococcus coriaceous

a gumtree gall

Waxy scales (family Coccidae) tend to have a smooth coat, including the gross looking Tick Scale.
The images below is an unusual scale that sucks mallet bark and is protected by ants that build a glued litter cover to protect them from predators. See this blog.

protective cover built by ants

scales underneath note reddened sucked area

Cottony scales from the ancient Margarodidae and Monophlebidae families are the most common type in Foxes Lair.These have a cottony coat and/or weird cottony appendages. The one below that I found on a marri twig was surprisingly colourful with dinky little legs.

top view

underside

Cleaned up female

In the species below found on a quandong, females lay up to 600 eggs in an ovisac (egg sac), gradually moving along and extending it as they lay. After laying the last egg, they die at the end of the sac.