Newsteadia floccosa (De Geer)

Family

Ortheziidae

Common name

Boreal ensign scale

Field characters

Body oval or round, yellow, legs and antennae yellow; white wax plates cover dorsum and body margin; 10 marginal processes shortest on head, increasing in length posteriorly, resting on ovisac posteriorly; 10 medial plates cover dorsum with noticeable indentation on medial longitudinal line. Ovisac produced from ventral abdomen carried by female, not attached to host, approximately same length as female, ribbed. Male described by Koteja (1986e), rare or absent in most situations. Often occurring in moss.

Validation characters

Abdominal spiracles surrounded by 5 or more quadrilocular pores; leg and antennal setae conical, spinose; medial wax plates continuous across thorax and abdomen with small gap on thorax; anal ring setae spinelike; antennae 6- or 7-segmented. Other characters: Ovisac band complete, tibia and tarsus fused; trochanter and femur fused; basal 2 segments of antenna conspicuously larger than other segments; 5 pairs of abdominal spiracles.

Comparison

Newsteadia floccosa is similar to N. minima Morrison by having similar arrangements of wax plates; basal 2 segments of antennae greatly enlarge; medial wax plates with small gap medially. Newsteadia floccosa differs by having more than 5 quadrilocular pores near each abdominal spiracle (2 or 3 on N. minima) and antennal setae predominantly conical with acute apex (cylindrical with enlarged apex on N. minima).

U.S. quarantine notes

This species was not intercepted at U. S. ports-of-entry between 1995 and 2012 but it is included in this tool because it had been intercepted several times previously. We have examined specimens taken in quarantine from Denmark (moss); England (sphagnum moss); Scotland (moss); Sweden (Vaccinium). ScaleNet includes hosts in over 20 plant families; it only occurs in the Palaearctic zoogeographic region. One species of Newsteadia other than N. floccosa has been intercepted at a U. S. port-of-entry, N. tristani (Silvestri) (Mexico, on orchids).

Important references

Koteja1986e; Kozar2004; Morris1952; Rogoja1958.

Scalenet catalog and citation list

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