Acantholecanium haloxyloni
Creators: name: Moghaddam, Masumeh
name: Watson, Gillian W.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Hemiptera
Coccidae
Acantholecanium
Acantholecanium haloxyloni

description: Acantholecanium haloxyloni (Hall)
(Fig. 10, Plate 1D, distribution map Fig. 88D)
Ctenochiton haloxyloni Hall, 1926: 17. Acantholecanium haloxyloni (Hall); Borchsenius 1949a: 340.
Field characters: Live adult female broadly oval to circular, highly convex, almost hemispherical. Margin with a series of stout rays. Dorsum rugose, each side with a submarginal suture that runs posteriorly into anal plates. Dorsum with wax plates, each plate forming a mound topped by a small, irregularly shaped glassy mass like granulated sugar, giving characteristic appearance. Wax plates have some sort of arrangement but this is obscure. Anal cleft fairly short. Anal plates dark brown. Dorsum grey with a tinge of yellow-green or pink in some specimens. Adult females turn darker with age (Hall 1926).
Microscopic diagnosis: Dorsum. Derm of young adult female membranous with a series of small rounded lobe-like lateral projections, becoming leathery with age. Setae small, bluntly spinose and sparse. Pores small and sparse. Preopercular pores circular, present in a compact group of 26–38 anterior to anal plates, with a few laterally also. Tubular ducts and duct tubercles absent. Anal plates together rounded-quadrate, with posterior margin longer than anterior margin; apex of each plate with 3 apical or subapical setae. Anal ring with 8 setae.
Margin. With spinose setae, rather short and blunt; with 13–23 setae on each side between stigmatic areas.
Venter. Derm entirely membranous. Pregenital disc-pores mostly each with 10 loculi; abundant around anogenital fold, less abundant on abdominal segments; also present in small groups mesad to each coxa and antenna. Spiracular disc-pores mostly each with 5 loculi; present in bands between margin and each spiracle and extending a short distance medially. Microducts present throughout. Ventral tubular ducts of 2 types: (i) large ducts each with both inner and outer ductules very broad; abundant in a broad submarginal band from just anterior to antennae posteriorly to about abdominal segment II, but absent from head between antennal bases; and (ii) ducts each with outer ductule narrower than type (i), but with a filamentous inner ductule, sparsely present medially on thorax and anterior abdominal segments, and more widely on abdominal segments VI‒VIII. With about 5 pairs of short setae on pregenital segments (not illustrated); other setae short and sparse. Legs very much reduced, each with tibia and tarsus fused, although pseudo-articulation sometimes present; claw very small and blunt; tarsal and claw digitules reduced to fine setae. Antennae rather short, each with 7–9 ring-like segments.
Distribution: Acantholecanium haloxyloni is known from Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan (García Morales et al. 2016); in Iran, it is found in Azarbaijan -e Gharbi, Esfahan, Semnan and Yazd provinces (Moghaddam 2009).
Host-plants: The scale has been recorded on host-plants belonging to the genera Haloxylon, Noaea, Salsola and Suaeda (Amaranthaceae) (García Morales et al. 2016). In Iran, it has been found on Haloxylon sp. and Noaea mucronata (Moghaddam 2013).
Economic importance: Not of any economic importance in Iran.
Natural enemies: In Iran, A. haloxyloni is attacked by the parasitoid wasp Eunotus nigriclavis (Förster) (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae) (Lotfalizadeh & Gharali 2008).
description: Published as part of Moghaddam, Masumeh & Watson, Gillian W., 2024, The Scale Insects Of Iran (Hemiptera: Coccomorpha) Part 3 The Soft Scales (Coccidae) And Other Families, pp. 1-202 in Zootaxa 5542 (1) on page 37, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5542.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/14385386