Porcelli, F. 2008a The body inflation of adult female Pollinia pollini (Costa, 1857).. Proceedings of the XI International Symposium on Scale Insect Studies, Oeiras, Portugal, 24-27 September 2007. ISA Press Lisbon, Portugal 322 pp.

Notes: This poster shows the progress in the study of the change in body size of adult female Pollinia pollini (Costa). Abundant material of this species can be collected on Olive trees in Southern Italy an you can find all female instars during the spring/summer. Observations were carried on about fifty adult females that were slide mounted with spacers and pictures were taken from side, venter and dorsum. The mounting technique is the usual one: tissues are macerate using cold NaOH and cuticle is clarified by Essig's aphid fluid that also served as mounting medium. Some points of discussion arise from the evidence. Firstly, full-grown adult females are considerably larger than young ones because all the body enlarges. Secondly, the body enlargement seems to occur mainly on the dorsolateral region rather than on the ventral. Thirdly, the general body enlargement seems to be the result of a sort of inflation that stretches the loose cuticle surrounding the glandular pores of young females. The question of whether this loose cuticle alone is responsible for the body inflation or not and the role of the general cuticle thinning during growth are discussed.