#scale insect

[vintagewildlife]

Scale bugs By: A. B. Klots From: Life Nature Library: The Forest 1961

[jonnysinsectcatalogue]

Soft Brown Scale Insect - Coccus hesperidum

Despite winter's cold slowing things down in the insect world, that doesn't mean that things stop altogether, as can be evidenced with these tiny ovals. If you look a little closer beneath the waxy cuticle and you'll find features that correspond with more conventional insects. There's more to this appearance than meets the eye, but that will be discussed later on. While in nature, these small insects would be dormant until warmer weather arrives, any individuals fortunate enough to climb onto an indoor plant (from the outside) and experience consistently warm temperatures can ride out the colder days while indulging themselves with as food as they want without interference from natural predators. It's a pretty nice life...until the infestation is discovered, as was the case in these pictures. In the previous post featuring Scale Insects on this blog, there were only a handful of individuals planted on a ficus rubber plant; the thick and toxic sap doesn't necessarily provide the best environment. The individuals photographed here meanwhile had the perfect plant to adhere to: two young lemon trees still growing. This species of Bug has a penchant for citrus trees, and is considered a notorious pest within farming and greenhouse settings for those plants! Although Scale insects can be managed with ease, controlling them across many plants can be arduous if their numbers explode as seen in these images!

Their small size can make them difficult to account for as well, as one individual can lay a large amount of eggs and restart the infestation of tiny creatures again. Compared to my thumb, they are around the size of a blemish, and indeed, there are dozens of large individuals and (probably) hundreds of smaller individuals dotting the tree's leaves and stem! As a result of the aggregation's feeding, these poor plants have become drenched in sticky honeydew excretions. This is actually how we discovered these individuals. As a result of honeydew production, Carpenter Ants found their way inside the house in search of the sugary liquid, but haven't yet climbed up the stems to tend to the Scales. With an armored cuticle and a colony of tenders to ensure safety, the feeding activity is what causes complications to the plants that these Scales feed on, rather than the ongoing feeding itself. Accumulation of sugary material along the surface of a leaf invites mould to grow, and such a rot can spread and destroy plants rapidly if not addressed! While I'm seemingly making a big deal about this, aggregations of these Parasitic Bugs do not spell out doom and gloom. In fact, some species of Scale Insects have been used as biological controls to manage invasive plant-life be weakening them and slowing down their growth and potential for flowering and seed generation. This species, however, is not one of those controls.

Pictures were taken on April 23, 2026 with a Google Pixel 8a. If you find yourself facing Scale Insects, dubbing rubbing alcohol using a Q-tip on the Scale will suffice. The stem and leaves should also be scrubbed of honeydew and then monitored for additional aggregations.

[chameleocoonj]

feather millipede + cottony cushion

[philippinewildlifeart]

Chances are, you’ve met Lanzones!

They’re so delicious, they are celebrated every year when they are in season. They’re also known as buahan or buwahan in Basilan (JS Felix Localpedia), as well as langsat in Indonesia, and langseh in Malaysia among many other names (Abdallah 2022).

Lanzones or Lansium domesticum is native to Southeast Asia, with the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand as important sources of lanzones commercially (Abdallah 2022).

Being native to the region, it has long been used as medicine to treat eye inflammation, ulcers, diarrhea, fever, flatulence, worms, insect bites, and more. In some places the fruit peel is dried and then burned to drive way mosquitoes (Abdallah 2022).

Humans aren’t the only ones who love lanzones… there is a small insect known as the lanzones scale insect that lives inside their leaves affecting lanzones production. It is known as Unaspis mabilis, because it can spread rapidly among lanzones trees, hence the word “mabilis” or fast in Tagalog! (Lit Jr. et al 2014)

So far this tiny little insect can only be found in the Philippines, but researchers believe it may have come from lanzones trees introduced from another country because of its invasive-like speed (Lit Jr. et al 2021).

Learn about Lanzones festivals happening every September to October at Filipinofood.art!

References

John Sherwin Felix, Lokalpedia, September 5, 2024 – https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=526431063094505&id=100071828474951&set=a.179932637744351

Hossam M Abdallah et al 2022 – Lansium domesticum – A Fruit with Multi-Benefits: Traditional Uses, Phytochemicals, Nutritional Value, and Bioactivities https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9002712/

Consolacion Y Ragasa et al 2006 – Antimicrobial Terpenoids from Lansium domesticum https://www.academia.edu/4287939/Antimicrobial_Terpenoids_from_Lansium_domesticum

Ireneo L Lit, Jr et al 2014 – A new species of armored scale insect (Hemiptera: Diaspididae) on Lansium domesticum trees in the Philippines https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378704618_A_new_species_of_armored_scale_insect_Hemiptera_Diaspididae_on_Lansium_domesticum_trees_in_the_Philippines

L Ireneo L Lit, Jr et al 2021 – First Report of the Lanzones Scale Insect, Unaspis mabilis Lit & Barbecho (Hemiptera: Diaspididae), Infesting Cacao, Theobroma cacao https://www.ukdr.uplb.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=pas

[crudlynaturephotos]

[drhoz]

#2959 & 2960 - Armoured Scale and Parasitoid Wasp

Tiny Diaspidid scale insects on Peppermint Tree (Agonis flexuosa). Probably subtribe Fioriniina.

The white waxy shelters incorporate the moulted skin of their youngest instars. The smooth scales are the females, and the males the fluffy ones. Either way, the shelter isn't protecting them from the minute ( <2mm ) wasp currently injecting her eggs into the residents.

There were also plenty of the youngest stage of the scale insects, naked and presumably nervous.

The Diaspididae is the largest family of scale insects with over 2650 described species and around 400 genera.

Woodman Point, Perth, WA.

[revretch]

Hello, I just saw your post on weird animal reproduction and it was super interesting!

But I was wondering about the cottony cushion scale insect -- if the male scale keeps infesting and mating with his female offspring on and on and on, when does it stop? The phrasing gave me the vibe that the male never dies, he just keeps being transferred to different females. Is this a form of immortality? Or does he not really count as being alive, if he's just a lump of tissue?

He's definitely *alive,* since even a single cell counts as alive. From what I understand, the cell line is immortal. This isn't unprecedented-- Tasmanian devils have two contagious cancer cell lines that they spread by biting each other in the face, dogs have one that's an STD, and labs have kept the cervical cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) going for decades for experimentation. The very thing that causes your cells to age is also part of keeping them from becoming cancerous, so cancer is often immortal (until it kills its life support). Basically, it's just a multicellular organism becoming single-celled again.

So yeah, the immortality part isn't unusual. This is just the only case I know of of a cell line like this not only not harming the host, but also reproducing sexually!

[ironmyrmidon]

I watched a video about a scientific paper analyzing some bugs and a dinosaur feather that were trapped in amber that determined the bugs were ancestral bird lice, but then another paper was published explaining that not only were the bugs not lice but they weren't even parasites.

If I wrote and published a scientific paper and then someone else wrote and published a scientific paper about how I'm a dummy who can't even differentiate a louse from a scale insect, I think I would cry.