Valid Names Results

Batarasa lumampao Takagi, 2009 (Diaspididae: Batarasa)

Nomenclatural History

• Batarasa lumampao Takagi 2009: 135. Type data: PHILIPPINES: Palawan Island, Sitip Tig Wayan, Barangay Marrangas, Batarasa District [=Bataraza], near Brooke's Point, on Schizostachyum lumampao; collected 18.viii.1993.. Holotype, female, Type depository: Los Banos: Entomological Museum, Museum of Natural History, University of the Philippines at Los Banos, College, Laguna, Luzon, Philippines; accepted valid name

Common Names

Ecological Associates

Hosts:

Families: 1 | Genera: 2

Geographic Distribution

Keys

Remarks

• Biology: This species builds a colony on the node, where branches grow out. In the colony, adult females are crowded closely together, standing on the head, and their bodies grow rather plump. The exuvial casts of both nymphal instars are irregularly ruptured, with the dorsal and ventral portions often disconnected from each other, and remain around the body of the adult female. The female does not construct any distinct test; this is natural, because the caudal disc is almost devoid of ducts. The body of the full-grown adult female is partly surrounded with the exuvial casts and waxy ubstance secreted around, but the posterior end is naked. The structure of the naked pygidium suggests that, in situ, the pygidium is bent towards the ventral side probably at right angles to the longitudinal axis of the body, and that the crowded colony, in which the adult females stand on the head, is roofed with their caudal discs held horizontal or nearly so. The pygidium, however, should be returned up to expose the vulva for copulation and also for oviposition or the release of crawlers. (All this is no more than a speculation in the present state of study, but there seems to be no other plausible and reasonable explanation.) This species is probably ovoviviparous, nymphs of the first instar having been observed within the bodies of some full-grown adult females. The male constructs a slender test, with both dorsal and ventral portions formed complete. Male and female specimens were obtained from the same colonies. It seems that the male tests are formed in narrow spaces among females or around the mass of females. (Takagi, 2009)
• General Remarks: Description and illustration of adult female and second-instar male nymph by Takagi (2009).

Illustrations

Citations