Editor: Dug Miller Systematic Entomol. Lab. Building 005, Room 137 10300 Baltimore Avenue Plant Science Institute Beltsville Agric. Res. Ctr. Beltsville, MD 20705 USA dmiller @sel.barc.usda.gov

Volume XXIX December 30, 2005

ISSIS-XI

Manuela Branco, Instituto Superior Agronomia, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (ISA-INIA), Portugal: The meeting will be held on the campus of the National Agronomic Station (Estação Agronómica Nacional, Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária (EAN-INIA)). It will be jointly organized and sponsored by ISA-UTL and EAN-INIA. The meeting place is located in a park in the city of Oeiras, which is about halfway between Lisbon (17 km distance) and Cascais (13 km). Travel to both cities can be made by train, more or less in 15 min. Oeiras is near an interesting tourist region in the route line Lisbon- Estoril - Cascais - Cabo da Roca (the westernmost point in Continental Europe) and Sintra (UNESCO World Heritage Centre), which we will explore for the one-day field trip including the possibility of collecting scale insects (e.g., in Sintra). The date of the meeting is not decided, but we are planning for it to be between the end of September 2007 (two last weeks) and early October (first week). We are planning to send the first announcement out sometime during the first three months of 2006. If you need more information or details please do not hesitate to contact me (mrbranco@isa.utl.pt).

ISSIS-X

Lerzan Erkilic, Plant Protection Research Institute, Adana, Turkey: I hope that everyone received their copy of the proceedings. If not, they can find them at the following address: http://www.yyu.edu.tr/issis.asp The site also includes images of activities during the meetings. I would like to thank Bora for all his efforts in preparing the proceedings and putting them at this address at Yüzüncü Yil University. I hope the coming year brings health, happiness and success to all.

NEWS

Michelle Leddel, Century High School, Alhambra, California, USA and Joel Grossman, editor of IPM Practioner, California, USA: 'Our little scale insect' may become a household term after people learn about a just published book, "A Perfect Red." By Amy Butler Greenfield. Joel Grossman, who writes the Entomological Society of America Conference Highlights for the IPM Practitioner, and I have a book review that should be of broad interest to readers of the Scale. For more information see www.amybutlergreenfield.com and www.aperfectred.com.

REVIEW OF NEW BOOK "A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire" (Harper-Collins, 2005; 338 pages; ISBN: 0060522755). This is a tale of colonialism, empires, world trade, pirates, fashion, the color red, and a scale insect, Dactylopius, whose harvest as a medicine, clothing dye, food ingredient (mixed with chocolate it looked like a bowl of blood and repulsed the Spanish Conquistadors), etc., dates back thousands of years in the Americas. The book, which includes tales of botanical and scale insect espionage, is designed to appeal to the general reader. It reads like a novel, because its author Amy Butler Greenfield has the skills of a novelist. Greenfield is also an historian with knowledge of multiple languages, which aided in combing European archives for documents pertaining to world trade in the red cochineal dye harvested in the bodies of Dactylopius scale insects grown in southern Mexico. A Perfect Red places the cochineal scale into the larger fabric of world history. That history is surprisingly relevant today, with its geo-political intrigue and stories of heads of state (e.g. Spanish kings) turning to deficit spending and going beyond their budgets to finance their imperial aims, religious agendas, and military machines. Indeed, the cochineal scale insect grown by small farmers in southern Mexico was second only to silver in providing the financing that kept the Catholic Spanish Empire on top of the world and ahead of the Protestant British in the 16th and 17th centuries. Far from being a textbook, this book places scale insects into the heart of modern world history and is very enjoyable reading. It will be a welcome change of pace from scientific papers, and provide readers with some cochineal scale historical tales to enliven dinner and party conversations. Some of the gaps in our knowledge are almost as interesting as Greenfield's sweeping world history, and it is here that entomology using modern DNA and other technologies can be brought into play. For example, it is clear that the cochineal scale insect of commerce was deliberately bred for its red dye in southern Mexico. But not even Greenfield can tell us how many thousands of years ago the Dactylopius of commerce was first cultivated by the ancient Mexicans. Just as we unravel the genetic heritage of corn, we might similarly determine when the cochineal scale (and perhaps also its prickly pear cactus host plant) was first domesticated. Indeed, being able to date scale insect domestication in Mexico and comparing it to silk moth domestication in China would be useful to historians, anthropologists, and others.

Lerzan Erkilic, Plant Protection Research Institute, Adana, Turkey: Since 2004, I am spending more research effort on the practical side of scale insects studies. We recently established a beneficial insects rearing facilities for citrus mealybug biological control in citrus groves rearing Cryptolaemus montrozieri and Leptomastix dactylopii. We also provide advice and technical services to facilitate the usage of beneficials in citrus groves. However, biological control is currently used in only about 5% of citrus due primarily to problems with pesticide residues.

Jan Giliomee, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa: During the past year my post-doc student Waktola Wakgari and I published descriptions of all female stages of six mealybug species that occur on citrus in South Africa (African Entomology 13:281-332). This was necessary to enable the morphological identification of immatures (and adults) that may be found on exported fruit. The presence of South African endemics on fruit is of course not acceptable to importing countries and may lead to consignments being destroyed. Waktola briefly returned to South Africa from Ethiopia, where he now works, to bring about changes to the manuscript suggested by our valued reviewer Penny Gullan, who happened to be visiting from California at the time.

Giuseppina Pellizzari, Universita di Padova, Legnaro, Italy: I am continuing my work on collecting Italian scale insects. Among them several appear to be new species, but I have not had time to describe them. I hope to begin doing this in the near future. Last year we discovered two new alien scale species that are recorded outdoors in Italy for the first time, namely Fiorinia pinicola and Pseudococcus comstocki. A third species, an Eriococcus species, was recorded on ornamental plants of Leptospermum scoparium, a plant native to New Zealand. Rosa Henderson kindly provided me with descriptions of New Zealand eriococcids and I also checked the Australian species but my specimens don’t fit any of them. Has anyone else collect eriococcids on Leptospermum? Dug Miller thinks the Eriococcus species may be native to North America. During 2005, I collaborated with two Italian colleagues (Tino Russo and Antonio Tranfaglia) in writing a book on the scale insects of olive and fruit trees; it is near completion and will be in press soon. In addition, I am working with several European colleagues to build a list of alien arthropod species of Europe. It consists of compiling a list of alien arthropod species (except Aranea and Crustacea) in Europe. Alien species are defined as species whose primary introduction was caused directly or indirectly by man’s activity. We will use 1492 (or the "discovery" of America) as the departure date for considering species aliens. We will publish the results in a book "Alien invasive species of insects and mites in Europe". In the list of alien introduced insects, as you can imagine, scales constitute a major component.

Yair Ben-Dov, Department of Entomology, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan, Israel: During 2004 I have been updating the 11 families, which I am processing, for ScaleNet, the joint project with Dug Miller. Data were added and updated on the families: Aclerdidae, Asterolecaniidae, Beesoniidae, Carayonemidae, Coccidae, Dactylopiidae, Diaspididae (subfamilies Aspidiotinae, Comstockiellinae and Odonaspidinae), Kerriidae, Lecanodiaspididae, Margarodidae and Pseudococcidae. This is the appropriate time to thank our colleagues for the comments, notes and corrections which they sent us. We very much appreciate your feedback, as it contributes to ScaleNet, for the benefit of all. The Catalogue of the Margarodidae (Ben-Dov, Y. 2005. A systematic catalogue of the of the Scale Insect family Margarodidae (Hemiptera: Coccoidea) of the world. Intercept Publishers, Wimborne, UK & Lavoisier, Paris. 400 pp.) was published on January 2005, and it is available for purchase from the Publisher; information is available at the URL: http://www.intercept.co.uk. Subsequently, the database for the family has been added to ScaleNet, and it is now available on-line. The website Directory of Scale Insects (Hemiptera: Coccoidea) Systematists, was developed and placed on-line during 2004 on the Internet at the URL: http://www.agri.gov.il/publications/systematists. This website was developed to provide information on systematists of scale insects, beginning with Carl von Linnaeus (1707-1778) to the present. A scale insect systematist is regarded, in the context of this Directory, as a person who has been either an author or co-author of a new taxon in the Coccoidea. During 2005 I have added data for several ‘new’ systematists, corrected errors and supplemented the information from available records. It is my wish to update and upgrade the Directory. Therefore, feedback from colleagues and users will be highly appreciated. If you discover that a particular scale insect systematist is not included in the Directory, or you have new information and corrections to the included information, please send the information by email to yairbd@int.gov.il.

Chris Hodgson, The National Museum of Wales, Wales, UK: All of the projects listed in last year’s “The Scale” as being nearly completed are finished and are either in the late stages of publication or have been published. In addition, Jon Martin and I published a paper on a new soft scale genus (Fistulicoccus) and 2 new species from Hong Kong and New Guinea (in Zootaxa). The following projects are now at an advanced stage and should be published reasonably soon: Vahedi & Hodgson - on some Porphyrophora species from Europe, the Middle East and north Africa (in Systematics and Biodiversity); Hodgson & Foldi - morphology of the adult males of Margarodidae sensu Morrison (in Zootaxa); the morphology of Marchalina hellenica (with Sofia Gounari); a revision of the soft scale genus Cissococcus in South Africa (with Ian Millar - we believe this genus does belong to the Coccidae but it is the only known gall-forming soft scale); a check list of the insects of the Galapagos Islands (with Charlotte Causton and many others); the systematics and biology of the South African eriococcid genus Calycicoccus (with Penny Gullan, Jan Giliomee and Lyn Cook). On-going projects are: the phylogeny of the non-margarodoid genera based on adult males; a revision of the monophlebid genus Palaeococcus (with the help of Zvi Mendel, Sofia Gounari and others); a possible revision of the margarodid genus Stigmacoccus (with Gillian Watson and Amauri Bogo); descriptions of the type species of the South American eriococcid genera (with Dug Miller); the immature stages of New Zealand Coccidae (with Rosa Henderson); the males of the diaspid genus Leucaspis from New Zealand (with Rosa Henderson and Ben Normark); and, finally, a revision of the Coccidae of Australia (with Penny Gullan). None of this would be possible without the on-going support of the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, to whom I am extremely grateful.

Penny Gullan, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa: I'm writing this from Doug Downie's lab at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. Pete Cranston and I have been on sabbatical leave in South Africa since the end of September and are enjoying the change of scene, as well as the escape from administration and teaching. While here I'm mainly working on the taxonomy of mealybugs of the South African endemic plant genus Elytropappus (Asteraceae). The best known and most widely distributed species of Elytropappus, E. rhinocerotis, commonly is called "renosterbos" (rhinoceros bush) because early settlers believed that it was eaten by rhinoceros. Apparently there's no evidence for that claim. Certainly it is not palatable to livestock, but is a weedy pasture shrub in many places. However, both gall midges (Cecidomyiidae) and mealybugs seem to like it, and a few species of each induce galls on the foliage. In addition to gall-inducing pseudococcids, especially of the genus Diversicrus, there are other mealybug species that live among the bracts of galls induced on renosterbos by the gall midges and yet other mealybugs that feed on the stems. So the insect-plant associations are complex. In mid October, Pete and I spent an enjoyable few days in Stellenbosch, where we were looked after royally by Jan and Warnia Giliomee. We gave seminars at Stellenbosch University, met with other other academics and friends, and did some collecting and sightseeing in the local area. Jan has kindly agreed to continue the search for Diversicrus mealybugs on Elytropappus, since the type locality for the type species, D. longulum, is fairly close to Stellenbosch. I'm looking forward to a visit to the South African National Collection of Insects (SANC) in December. I'll spend a week there hosted by Ian Millar and get the chance to examine their extensive collection of African scale insects, including type material from De Lotto and Brain. One taxon of special interest to me, Ian and Chris Hodgson is Cissococcus Brain, which is gall-inducing on Rhoicissus (Vitaceae). Cissococcus is believed to be the only member of the family Coccidae to induce complex (covering) galls, but I had been guessing that it's really an eriococcid, perhaps related to the only native South African eriococcid, Calycicoccus (also a gall inducer). Chris Hodgson has studied immature and adult males of a couple of collections of Cissococcus and he's still betting on Coccidae. I now have some fresh specimens and the nymphs sure do look coccid-like. Hopefully the DNA will tell us the true relationships. While I'm enjoying southern Africa, my lab group at University of California, Davis (UCD), is busy with taxonomic and molecular activities on various scale insect groups. Cory Unruh is continuing her taxonomic and molecular phylogenetic research on iceryine margarodids for her Ph.D. Nate Hardy is completing the required coursework as well as doing molecular work for his Ph.D. on Australian gall-inducing eriococcids. Janie Booth is finishing up her Masters on Matsucoccus. Demian Kondo has become a gel-jock! Under the expert tuition of originally Lyn Cook and now Geoff Morse, he has been extracting DNA, doing PCRs and getting nucleotide sequences for coccids. He plans to produce the first molecular phylogeny for the higher groups within Coccidae and perhaps challenge (or support) the Hodgson higher classification of the family. In June 2005, our PEET (Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy) team had another get-together at UCD. Thirteen of us participated for part or all of a week: the Normark lab (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), the Gullan lab (UCD), Ray Gill and Gillian Watson (California Department of Food & Agriculture, Sacramento), Dug Miller (USDA, Beltsville) and Lyn Cook (all the way from the Australian National University, Canberra). We ran a workshop on cytology and endosymbionts of scale insects, at which Lyn was the lead trainer, showing us the wonders of coccoid chromosomes. Lyn also went on a pre-workshop field trip with Ben Normark and his students, and she stayed on in Davis after the workshop to work on a long overdue Gullan & Cook manuscript (which is still not done). I'll be seeing Lyn briefly in January 2006 when I travel back to California via a two-week stop in Australia. I will also see Rosa Henderson at Landcare Research, New Zealand, for one day in February.

Imre Foldi, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, France: My research on the archaeococcoids has resulted in two publications in 2005. One on the Matsucoccidae of the Mediterranean basin, the other on a generic revision of the family Margarodidae sensu stricto. I also have a paper in preparation on a generic revision of the family Monophlebidae, with descriptions of several new species. In addition, Chris Hodgson and I are collaborating on a very interesting comparative study on margarodid males; this is finished and is in press. We intend to follow this with another, more complete phylogenetic analysis based on adult males. With Ferenc Kozàr, I am currently working on some mealybugs from South America collected on one of my collecting trips. I have enjoyed working with both Chris and Ferenc. It was also a great pleasure to meet with Douglas Williams again in 2005 and have discussions during his recent visit to Paris.

André Panis, Laboratoire de Biologie des Invertebres, Antibes, France: I made short collecting trips to northern or higher altitude localities in the southern sections of France where some cold-limited scale-insect species were collected in the wild many years ago. I was investigating the question of their survival in the hard winter of 2005. A paper is in preparation on the present distribution and new host-plants of one of these species, Icerya purchasi Maskell, about one century after its introduction (on the French Riviera in 1910). Yearly number of generations of Pseudococcus maritimus (Ehrhorn) was established in a vineyard. I found P. maritimus, as morphologically defined by Gimpel and Miller (1996), on wine grapes in the southern areas of France in the seventies for the first time and again in 1999 and 2000. Three mealybugs are widely distributed in the southern vineyards: Heliococcus bohemicus Sulc, Phenacoccus aceris (Signoret), and Planococcus ficus (Signoret). Two other species are restricted to just a few vineyards: Planococcus citri (Risso) and Pseudococcus maritimus. In some areas Pseudococcus viburni (Signoret), which is very similar to P. maritimus, lives on wine grapes. I have not found it on wine grapes in the south.

Laurence Mound, Australian National Insect Collection, Canberra, Australia: We have recently completed an inventory of the Pseudococcidae slide material in the collection and are planning to do the rest of the Coccoidea slide collection in the near future. This inventory is included in this edition of “The Scale” on page 13. Also since many of the readers of “The Scale” may be interested in aphids, I want to draw attention to the ABRS list of Australian aphids.

See www.deh.gov.au/cgi-bin/abrs/fauna/tree.pl?pstrVol=APHIDOIDEA&p

Wengei Tong, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts USA: I'm just starting my PhD at Harvard, and am thinking of working on Icerya purchasi and East African scales. Ben Normark suggested that I post a note about this on "The Scale".

Adrian Rakimov, Mildura, Australia, : I have recently been introduced to the fantastic world of scale insects. I am one year into my PhD on the distribution, lifecycle and biological control of the grapevine scale (Parthenolecanium persicae) in Australian vineyards. Very little work has been done on P. persicae and other coccids in Australian vineyards, which has made my work challenging, but at the same time provided me with a wealth of opportunities! Parthenolecanium persicae is the most common coccid pest of grapevines in Australia, however, I have also found significant infestations of Coccus hesperidum and Parasaissetia nigra. To date I have collected a number of parasitoids of P. persicae from around Australia including; Coccophagus lycimnia, Metaphycus maculipennis, M. helvolus, Microterys sp. and Cheiloneurus sp. I have also collected male P. persicae and this appears to be the first record of them in Australia. Currently, I am establishing glasshouse cultures of P. persicae and parasitoids to be used in future bioassay experiments. I also plan to look at how ants affect the ability of natural enemies to control populations of P. persicae. If anyone has any obscure or hard to get P. persicae papers or specimens, it would be greatly appreciated if you could send them to me at: The Department of Primary Industries, PO Box 905, Mildura, Victoria 3502, Australia.

Selma Ulgenturk, Ankara University Agriculture Faculty, Ankara – Turkey: This year I continued my research in the following areas: 1) Biological control of euonymus scale (Unaspis euonymi Comst., Diaspididae) using Chilocorus kuwanae Silvestri (Coccinellidae); 2) Biological relationships between some mealybugs and the parasitoid Anagyrus pseudococci (Girault) (Encyrtidae) and their interactions with the mealybug predator Cryptolaemus montrizieri Mulsant (Coccinellidae); 3) The effectiveness of entomopathogen Paecilomyces farinosus (Deuteromycotina: Hyphomucetes) on citrus mealybugs Planococcus citri (Risso) and P. ficus (Signoret) (Pseudococcidae) and the interactions of the mealybugs with fungicides. I also completed the following research: 1) Studies on some biological characters of Planococcus citri (Risso) on certain ornamental plants under laboratory conditions. 2) Some morphological and biological characteristics of Melanaspis inopinata Leonardi (Diaspididae)

Demian Kondo, University of California, Davis California, USA: The year 2005 has been flying by pretty fast for me; too many projects and too little time. My work this year can be summarized as follows: I had finally described a new mango pest coccid from Thailand in collaboration with M.L. Williams (Zootaxa: 1045:25-37); with P.J. Gullan we published a review of the genus Austrotachardiella Chamberlin and described a new species from Colombia (Neotropical Entomology 34(3): 395-401); with M.L. Williams and P.J. Gullan we erected the new genus Octolecanium in order to accommodate Neolecanium perconvexum (Cockerell) and describe a new species from Guatemala (TIP Revista Especializada en Ciencias Químico-Biológicas 8(1): 5-11); also with Mike and Penny, we reviewed the coccid genus Xenolecanium Takahashi and erected the new genus Takahashilecanium in order to accommodate Xenolecanium perconvexum Takahashi (Entomological Science 8: 109-120); a short paper and abstract with Mike on the coccid genus Akermes Cockerell came out in the ISSIS proceedings (Proceedings of the X international symposium of scale insect studies; Pp. 71-77; P. 78, April 19-23, 2004, Adana, Turkey). Two more papers are in press, the first one on the taxonomy and biology of the mealybug genus Plotococcus Miller & Denno in Brazil, with descriptions of two new species (Kondo, T., Gullan, P.J. Culik, M. and Ventura, J.A., Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environment), and a new genus of African soft scale, Pseudocribrolecanium gen. nov.(Journal of Insect Science). This last paper resulted from a collecting trip in June to Ghana sponsored by the PEET project that supports my postdoctoral research at UC Davis. The trip to Ghana consisted of members from various Institutions including the New York State Museum, Brigham Young University, and the University of California, Davis. Geoff Morse who is conducting postdoctoral research in Davis at the Cranston and Gullan lab until the end of 2005 was also a member of the expedition to Ghana and helped me collect the species that resulted in the Pseudocribrolecanium paper. With a little bit of pressure, a lot of encouragement, patience and cooperation by Lyn Cook, Geoff Morse, Penny Gullan and the students at the Cranston and Gullan lab, I have started a project aimed at producing a genetic level phylogeny of the family Coccidae. In order to conduct this study I have asked several of my colleagues, e.g. Gillian Watson, Ray Gill, Chris Hodgson, Jon Martin, Mike Williams, Greg Hodges, and others for help in obtaining alcohol or dried material for DNA extraction. I am still short of many coccids for this work, and would like to ask for help. I especially need specimens from coccids included in the subfamily Eriopeltinae (e.g. Eriopeltis festucae, Luzulaspis spp., Poaspis spp., etc); Cyphococcinae (i.e. Cyphococcus Laing and Messinea De Lotto); Cissococcinae (i.e. Cissococcus fulleri Cockerell); Coccinae: Paralecaniini (Paralecanium spp., Fistulococcus spp., Austrolecanium spp., Maacoccus spp., etc); and Filippinae (e.g. Ceronema spp., Filippia follicularis, Kozaricoccus bituberculatus, Takahashia japonica, etc.). I will appreciate coccids from other subfamilies as well. Finally but not least, I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to Lerzan Erkilic and M. Bora Kaydan and all those who organized the successful ISSIS 2004 meeting at Adana, Turkey.

Lyn Cook, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia: This year I have been able to return to working on scale insects almost full time after spending the past four years doing mostly plant systematics, evolution and biogeography. I currently have funding to work on scale insect-host plant interactions and continue to be primarily interested in gall-inducing 'eriococcids'. In June this year, I visited Penny Gullan's lab in California and attended "scale camp", where it was good to catch up with other coccidologists and talk scales. I've also been lucky to have been able to go on several big field trips in Australia (totalling more than six months over the past 4 years) and have collected many new gallers - particularly eriococcid gallers of Myrtaceae. I have also continued to work on Apiomorpha and genetic data suggest that the genus represents a cryptic species-radiation of well over 100 species; all on Eucalyptus. Mike Crisp (ANU) and I are continuing collaborations on plant systematics and hope to be able to test some hypotheses of scale insect-host cospeciation. We currently have an honours student (Robert Edwards) working on a molecular phylogeny of Melaleuca, which will feed into our studies of cospeciation between the newly discovered species radiation of eriococcid gallers and their host Melaleucas. The undescribed species (probably more than 30) appear to be most closely related to eriococcids currently named "Sphaerococcus" ferrugineus and "S." socialis. Some other collaborative projects include the evolution of eriococcids that feed on Nothofagus (joint with Penny Gullan and Nate Hardy), Matsucoccus systematics (Penny G and Janie Booth) and a molecular phylogeny of Coccidae (primarily with Demian Kondo). I would like to thank all those coccidologists who have provided specimens and identifications for the molecular systematics studies and hopefully papers will start to come out in 2006.

M. Bora Kaydan, Ankara University, Faculty of Agriculture, Plant Protection
Department, Turkey: At last we have finished the “Proceedings of the Xth International Symposium of Scale Insect Studies” with Lerzan Erkýlýç; it was published this summer. Now I am working on the scale insect fauna of the eastern part of Turkey. All summer I collected interesting species from unusual and diverse locations. This project will continue two more years. I also have been studying mealybug-parasitoid interactions. Some recent faunistic articles on scale insects were accepted by “Acta Phytopathologica et Entomologica Hungarica”, “Bolletino di Zoologia Agraria e di Bachicoltura” with the assistance of Dr. Kozár. Finally I am planning to describe two new species of Atrococcus and Stipacoccus and to prepare a list of mealybug species of Turkey because a lot of new species have been added in the last five years.

Benjamin Normark, University of Massachusetts, Massachusetts, USA, bnormark@ent.umass.edu. The main focus of our laboratory continues to be on molecular systematics of Diaspididae.  We are always very grateful to receive samples of diaspidids from anywhere. We are interested in the genetic diversity of common pests, as well as the systematics of non-pests, so virtually any sample with recoverable DNA (ideally in 100% ethanol) is useful to us. We recently published one paper on molecular systematics of the Aspidiotus nerii complex (first author Lisa Provencher) in Annals of the Entomol. Soc. Am., and another on molecular systematics across Diaspididae (first author Geoffrey Morse) in Syst. Entomol. We have also recently submitted a third paper (on the molecular phylogeography of an eriococcid, the beech scale Cryptococcus fagisuga, first author Rodger Gwiazdowski) to Biological Control. Our next publication (including authors Geoff Morse and Rosa Henderson) will probably be on the molecular phylogenetics of New Zealand Leucaspis. Ph.D. student Matthew Gruwell is doing his Ph.D. dissertation on the primary endosymbionts of diaspidids; Ph.D. student Rodger Gwiazdowski is starting dissertation work on the molecular systematics of Chionaspis, especially of the sexual/parthenogenetic species complexes Ch. pinifoliae and Ch. salicis. Undergrad Jeremy Andersen has done a lot of work this year to expand our sequencing effort across Diaspididae and especially to develop the gene CAD new molecular marker for inferring phylogeny in scales. And I am still working to recruit another graduate student for a well-funded NSF research assistantship: alert your undergraduate students. We all travelled to Davis in June for the third Scale Camp, hosted by the Gullan lab, and learned from Lyn Cook about how to do chromosome squashes and from Gillan Watson, Ray Gill, and Penny about how to make good slides for morphological characters. Ray Gill gave us detailed maps and directions to collecting sites -- and a truck! -- that enabled us to have a very productive diaspidid safari in the Mojave. I remain especially interested in the unusual genetic systems of scale insects and related issues such as: sex ratios, sex determination, genomic imprinting, ploidy levels of bacteriomes/mycetomes, and cytogenetics.  One venue where I was invited to speak about these issues was the Gordon Research Conference on Epigenetics, where I was impressed to find researchers on the fundamentals of gene regulation (e.g., Amar Klar of the National Cancer Institute) who are interested in scale insect genetic systems, and who remember Spencer Brown and Uzi Nur. Indeed, I met the world's leading researcher on genomic imprinting in Drosophila -- Vett Lloyd of Mount Allison University in New Brunswick -- and found her keen to start in on mealybugs.

SOO-jung SUH, South Korea suhsj97@npqs.go.kr: I am a new face in the world of scale insects, and I would like to introduce myself. I am working for the National Plant Quarantine Service (NPQS) and have been charged with the identification of Coccoidea and Aleyrodidae. Actually I knew very little about scale insects until last year, and I still consider myself a novice. I have been interested in scale insects and whiteflies because they are major pests on many plants in my country. I wanted to improve my identification skills, so I trained with Greg Hodges for 11 months (from August 2004 to June 2005) at the Division of Plant Industry, FDACS. This trip was a great experience for me and I learned a lot about scale insects. I appreciate Greg's help and kindness and I was very glad to meet Dug Miller and Greg Evans while I was in the United States. I returned home in July 2005 and started working on scale insects and whiteflies of South Korea. I am particularly interested in the Diaspididae, so I have been concentrating on the Korean armored scale insects. Currently only 69 species have been recorded as occurring in South Korea, but I think more species are likely to be added in the future because neighboring nations, such as Japan and China, have many more identified species than Korea. I am planning to start a new project that will be a taxonomic revision of the Korean armored scale insects. I hope I can find new species during the survey phase of the study and plan to finish the project in 2009.

Vett Lloyd, Mt. Allision University, New Brunswick, Canada vlloyd@mta.ca: I'm a (very) recent convert to the wonderful world of mealybugs. I've been working on genomic imprinting in Drosophila for many years and have recently started to expand our work to Planococcus citri. We're interested in studying the mechanism of genomic imprinting and paternal chromosome elimination in mealybugs.

Greg Hodges, Division of Plant Industry, Gainesville, Florida : This past year has been a very busy one for myself, my wife and my lab. My wife (Dr. Amanda Hodges) is currently the entomology coordinator for the Southern Plant Diagnostic Network () and one of her main objectives has been to organize taxonomic workshops for taxonomists based at land grant universities in the southeastern United States. In December 2004, I participated in one of these workshops () sponsored by the Southern Plant Diagnostic Network along with Drs. Doug Miller, Gary Miller, Mike Williams, Greg Evans, Susan Halbert, Chris Dietrich and Steve Wilson. There were approximately 32 participants at the workshop and it was a lot of fun but a lot of work. Several nice publications from the above taxonomists were generated from this workshop and will be available in the December 2005 issue of the Florida Entomologist. Not too long after our ‘Homoptera’ workshop, Amanda asked me to help with another session. This time it was all about pink hibiscus mealybug (Maconellicoccus hirsutus) and all the various mealybugs that we routinely encounter in Florida. This past year I also hosted a very promising visiting scientist from South Korea. Her name is Dr. Soo Jung Suh and she spent 11 months with me learning about the taxonomy of the Coccoidea and also the Aleyrodidae. From her visit, we have generated four publications that will be out soon. Soo left my lab this past June and returned to South Korea where she has been asked to be the primary scale insect/whitefly identifier for the National Plant and Quarantine Service for her country. In October 2005, I had another visiting scientist spend time with me. Her name is Nereida Mestre Novoa from Cuba. She is currently finishing up her dissertation and working on the Coccidae of Cuba. This has also been an active year on the pest front for Florida. The pink hibiscus mealybug has continued to give us problems, especially in getting into new areas due to plant movement. The lobate lac scale (Paratachardina lobata (Kerriidae)) is still a major pest for south Florida and we now have about 300 host records for this scale in Florida alone. We have also seen the spread of Duplachionaspis divergens (Diaspididae) within our state this year and it looks as though it may have the potential to be nasty little pest for some of our ornamental grasses. If any of you ever get a wild hair to come my way, please know that you are all welcome. Just drop me a line () and let me know when or if you need specimens.

Manuela Branco, Instituto Superior Agronomia, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (ISA-INIA), Portugal: Please find below two references concerning scale insects that were accepted and will be in press soon. You might find it interesting for "The Scale". 1) Branco M., Franco J.C., Dunlkelblum E., Assael F., Protasov A., Ofer D., Mendel Z. (in press) A common mode of kairomonal attraction of larvae and adults of insect predators to the sex pheromone of their prey (Hemiptera: Matsucoccidae). Bulletin of Entomological Research. 2) Branco M., Lettere M., Franco J. C., Binazzi, A., Jactel, H.. (in press) Kairomonal response of predators to three pine bast scale sex pheromones. Journal of Chemical Ecology.

Gregory Evans, Beltsville, Maryland, USA, Gregory.A.Evans@usda.gov. After many years working with scale insect systematists, Dug Miller, Avas Hamon and Greg Hodges, I was given the privilege of joining the ranks in June 2004 as the National Coccidology Specialist for USDA/APHIS, a position previously occupied by Doug Odermatt (retired). My primary duty is to identify species of scale insects and whiteflies intercepted at the U.S. ports-of-entry. Several new species have been intercepted, particularly by Bert Lindsey (APHIS, Los Angeles), that I plan to describe with Dug Miller, who has been extremely helpful to me. We are also working together with Dr. Alessandra Rung to resolve the taxonomic status of Planococcus citri versus P. minor by a combination of morphological and DNA studies. I am especially grateful to André Panis for collecting and sending specimens of Planococcus citri from the type locality in France for our study. John Dooley (APHIS, San Francisco) and I are working on keys to the scale insects and whiteflies found on bananas. I continue to work on the systematics of aphelinid parasites of scale insects, aphids and whiteflies when I can.

Dug Miller and Alessandra Rung, Beltsville, Maryland, USA: Our major projects have been to complete expert system keys for the identification of scale insects intercepted at U. S. ports-of-entry. To date a family key http://www.sel.barc. usda.gov/ scalekeys/all_families.htm

and mealybug key http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/scalekeys /NET/Mealybugs.html are available on line. We currently are working on a soft scale key but are having difficulty finding funds to support the effort. The newest in the series of catalogs that has been published as a result of ScaleNet is A systematic catalogue of the Cerococcidae, Halimococcidae, Kermesidae, Micrococcidae, Ortheziidae, Phenacoleachiidae, Phoenicococcidae, and Stictococcidae of the world which was published in 2005 by Intercept (see http://www.intercept.co.uk). I have just submitted the last of our ScaleNet-based catalogs on the Diaspidinae, Leucaspidinae, and Ulucoccinae to the American Entomological Institute (AEI); this has been a major task because it contains 1600 camera ready pages. Unfortunately, Intercept was bought out by a French company Lavoisier and they were not interested in continuing to publish the volumes produced through ScaleNet. We also are pleased to announce that the book that John Davidson and I have been working on for nearly 30 years is now in print “Armored scale insect pests of trees and shrubs.” It is available from Cornell University Press at http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_order.html. Douglas Williams and I have just completed a manuscript on the armored scale genus Furcaspis which we also hope will be published by AEI. The other big news is that I am considering retiring in January of 2007 after 37 years with the US Department of Agriculture. This gives me a year to clean up all of the projects that are still in process and to straighten things out in the collection so that the next person here will begin with a clean slate. One important project for 2006 is to obtain cabinets for the slide collection so that we can incorporate the Kosztarb collection. We have written several proposals for funding, but have yet to succeed. The Miller Hotel has had a few visitors this year including Amanda and Greg Hodges, Douglas Williams, Janie Booth, and Cory Unruh.

Douglas Williams, The Natural History Museum, London, UK: For some reason I am unable to convince Douglas to write something for “The Scale” so I (Dug Miller) am writing something for him. The problem is, I miss a lot, and probably misrepresent his numerous accomplishments. In terms of travel, I know that he visited Beltsville, Maryland so that we could finish a paper on the armored scale genus Furcaspis. He also visited with his colleagues Danièle Matile and Imre Foldi in Paris where he is working on species of Stictococcus and other genera. He seems to have new papers coming out several times each year and I hope that we have caught most of them in ScaleNet. When he is home, I know he spends considerable time drawing the many exciting new scales that come across his desk; his major current works are on Protortonia and the Iceryines with Penny Gullan.

Michael Kosztarab, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA: Michael professionally had a productive year by seeing four of his articles published. He was fortunate last May to meet three of his former graduate students: Avas Hamon and Michael Williams in Beltsville, Maryland, during the celebration honoring the still living US Department of Agriculture aphidologist [and coccidologist] Louise M. Russell. In Regensburg, Germany Michael also met former graduate student Gema Perez Guerra and her family. Michael is serving for the third year in a row as the faculty adviser for the Virginia Tech Hungarian Student Association. Michael’s main hobby and pastime remains working in the garden and greenhouse. [Extracted from a holiday letter].

Agatino Russo, Gaetana Mazzeo and Pompeo Suma, Istituto di Entomologia Agraria, Catania, Italy: We are still working on the systematics of the Coccoidea, and faunistic and physiological aspects of the Pseudococcidae. Currently we are involved in studies on species living in Sicilian protected natural environments that are poorly known, and about species newly introduced through commerce of ornamental plants. A paper is in progress on the species related to succulents. A national research project is underway on the side effects of insecticides on the citrus mealybug and its parasitoids. Initial results have been presented in National and International Congresses (OILB, IOBC, Congresso Nazionale Italiano di Entomologia) and have been published. Next year we will begin research on populations of Planococcus citri in Sicily to distinguish them from other populations in the Mediterranean Basin using molecular tools; similar studies will be carried out on P. citri parasitoids.

Jon Martin, The Natural History Museum, London, UK : NHM scales on the move:
The big news in the collections world has been the move of the entire entomological collection of London ’s Natural History Museum during 2005. This has been to allow demolition of the Entomology building to make way for the creation of Phase 2 of the museum’s “Darwin Centre”. For the scale insect collections, Jon Martin began preparing in earnest in 2004, with a complete overhaul of the dry collections. Several separate collections, including the former Newstead and Green collections, were amalgamated into one. This “new” dry collection comprises small shunt boxes and small glass-topped boxes, and is alphabetically arranged according to up-to-date name combinations, making location of any named taxon much easier and quicker. The slide collections, already in much better order than the dry collections had been, were prepared for shipping by tightening the rows of slides to minimise movement. Several cabinets required attention to drawer handles and locks, to allow all cabinets to be secured. The scales, along with Lepidoptera and parasitic Hymenoptera, began their journey in June 2005. Their new location is some 4 miles from the main South Kensington museum, at Wandsworth (Southfields) and physically close to the Wimbledon tennis ground. By the end of October, approximately 100,000 coccoid slides and over 8,000 boxes of dry scales had been trucked across London , along with 82,000 drawers of Lepidoptera, their cabinets and the Entomology Library – not to mention 25 staff and their working environment. Once settled in, some distortion of wooden cabinets led to drawer-jamming and the whole coccoid and whitefly dry collection was then re-rehoused in metal “Dexion” drawer units, which was a job that Jon could have done without. Fortunately, settling has not led to such major problems with the wooden “Hill” slide cabinets. After the inevitable closed period, Gillian Watson (California Department of Agriculture) became the first visitor to the NHM scales’ new location in November. At the time of writing Ferenc Kozar ( Hungarian Academy of Sciences) is putting the new system through its paces. In theory at least, the whole process will be reversed in 2008 or 2009, with Darwin Centre 2 due to accommodate as much as possible of the NHM’s entomological collection. For now, the temporary arrangements are functioning well. The 4 th floor of the old building, which many coccidologists will recall (fondly, we hope!), is already but a memory.

PSEUDOCOCCIDAE

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