Friday 19 April 2013

A bug's bad hair day

Di found quite a few bugs on branches of a eucalyptus and thought they were quite unusual, not your average caterpillar.
 This turns out to be right as they are large "Mealybugs" of the Margarodioae family which in turn is part of the Coccoidea super family if my research is correct. One of the soft scale species of sap suckers but at 20mm long quite a bit larger than most scale or mealybugs. Ladybirds are one of the main predators attacking mealybugs but I think this would be too big a meal, so it will be interesting to see if anything is going to eat these characters.

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