''Newsteadia myersi'' is the only member of the

scale insect Scale insects are small insects of the order Hemiptera, suborder Sternorrhyncha. Of dramatically variable appearance and extreme sexual dimorphism, they comprise the infraorder Coccomorpha which is considered a more convenient grouping than the ...

family

Ortheziidae Ortheziidae is a family of scale insects commonly known as the ensign scales or ortheziids. They occur in most parts of the world but the majority of the species are found in the Neotropical and Nearctic regions while there are not many species i ...

to have been found in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. It was found by sifting through the leaf litter and debris under

nikau ''Rhopalostylis sapida'', commonly known as nīkau ( mi, nīkau), is a palm tree endemic to New Zealand, and the only palm native to mainland New Zealand. Etymology is a Māori word; in the closely related Eastern Polynesian languages of the ...

palm trees (''Rhopalostylis sapida'').Hoy, J. M. Re-description of ''Newsteadia myersi''
/ref>

Description

The adult female has a rounded oval body with inconspicuous segmentation. It is about 1.1 millimetres long by 0.85 millimetres wide. The rounded eyes are on short stalks located near the base of the antennae which are slender, about 0.7 millimetres long and normally have four segments. The legs are long and slender with a small number of

seta In biology, setae (singular seta ; from the Latin word for "bristle") are any of a number of different bristle- or hair-like structures on living organisms. Animal setae Protostomes Annelid setae are stiff bristles present on the body. Th ...

e. The upper side of the body has ten bands of short spines which are wide at the base and quickly taper to the tip. The underside is also banded with spines and the anterior section of the ovisac band is thickly covered with rather larger spines. The underside has a

spiracle Spiracle or spiraculum may refer to: * Spiracle (arthropods), opening in the exoskeletons of some arthropods * Spiracle (vertebrates), openings on the surface of some vertebrates * Spiraculum, a genus of land snails in family Cyclophoridae Cycl ...

on each segment. The anal ring is surrounded by a double row of pores and has a bunch of six backward pointing setae.

Biology

Very little is known of the life history of this species but it is likely to have four

instar An instar (, from the Latin '' īnstar'', "form", "likeness") is a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (''ecdysis''), until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to grow or ass ...

s as in other members of the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

. It may feed on the

hypha A hypha (; ) is a long, branching, filamentous structure of a fungus, oomycete, or actinobacterium. In most fungi, hyphae are the main mode of vegetative growth, and are collectively called a mycelium. Structure A hypha consists of one or ...

e of fungi growing in the leaf litter where it lives, or possibly on the living roots of plants.Morrison, H. 1925: ''Classification of Scale Insects of the Subfamily Ortheziinae.'' J. agric. Res. 30: 97-154.

References

Hemiptera of New Zealand Insects described in 1929 Ortheziidae {{Coccoidea-stub