Icerya

{{Short description|Genus of true bugs}}

{{Automatic taxobox

| image = Icerya-purchasi.jpg

| image_caption = Icerya purchasi, female

| taxon = Icerya

| authority = Signoret, 1875

| subdivision_ranks = Species

| subdivision = 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.{{cite book|title=Charles Valentine Riley: Founder of Modern Entomology|publisher=University of Alabama Press|place=Tuscaloosa|year=2019|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ceGMDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA221|page=221|chapter=Vedalia the "Wonder Beetle" and Biological Control|first1=W. Conner|last1=Sorensen|first2=Edward H.|last2=Smith|others=And Janet R. Smith, with Donald C. Weber|isbn=9780817392222}}

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.{{Cite journal |last=Normark |first=Benjamin B. |year=2003 |title=The Evolution of Alternative Genetic Systems in Insects |url=https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.ento.48.091801.112703 |journal=Annual Review of Entomology |language=en |volume=48 |issue=1 |pages=397–423 |doi=10.1146/annurev.ento.48.091801.112703 |issn=0066-4170|url-access=subscription }} 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.The Insects An outline of Entomology, Gullan & Cranston, Wiley-Blackwell 2001

List of species

References

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Category:Monophlebidae

Category:Sternorrhyncha genera

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