Icerya

Icerya
Icerya purchasi , female
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Hemiptera
Suborder:	Sternorrhyncha
Superfamily:	Coccoidea
Family:	Monophlebidae
Genus:	Icerya
Species
See text.

See text.

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

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. 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.

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