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

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

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 realm, Neotropical and Nearctic realm, Nearctic regions ...

to have been found in

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. It was found by sifting through the leaf litter and debris under nīkau palm trees (''

Rhopalostylis sapida ''Rhopalostylis sapida'', commonly known as nīkau, is a palm tree endemic to New Zealand, and the only palm native to mainland New Zealand. Etymology is a word borrowed from the Māori language; cognates of this word in the closely related E ...

'').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 (; seta ; ) are any of a number of different bristle- or hair-like structures on living organisms. Animal setae Protostomes Depending partly on their form and function, protostome setae may be called macrotrichia, chaetae, ...

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 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, which occurs between each moult (''ecdysis'') until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to ...

s as in other members of the

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

. 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 o ...

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