Icerya

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Icerya
File:Icerya-purchasi.jpg
Icerya purchasi
Scientific classification
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Icerya
Species

See text.

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Icerya is a genus of scale insects in the family Monophlebidae.

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, Icerya purchasi, are known to be hermaphrodites that reproduce by self-fertilising. Occasionally reproductively functioning males are produced from unfertilised eggs but generally individuals are monoecious and with a female-like nature but possessing an ovotestis which is part testis part ovary and sperm is transmitted ovarially from the female to her young.[1] 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.[2]

List of species

References

  1. THE EVOLUTION OF ALTERNATIVE GENETIC SYSTEMS IN INSECTS.
  2. The Insects An outline of Entomology, Gullan & Cranston, Wiley-Blackwell 2001

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