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Icerya

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

Last revised
Jun 8, 2026
Read time
≈ 2 min
Length
473 w
Citations
3
Source
Icerya
Icerya purchasi, female
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Clade: Pancrustacea
Class: Insecta
Order: Hemiptera
Suborder: Sternorrhyncha
Family: Monophlebidae
Genus: Icerya
Signoret, 1875
Species

See text

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

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

References

References

  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. PMID 12221039.
  3. The Insects An outline of Entomology, Gullan & Cranston, Wiley-Blackwell 2001