What is Metaphycus?

By Chelsie Vandaveer

March 26, 2003

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Soft scales (Homoptera: Coccidae) are dreadful to anyone who cultivates plants, but a nursery or fruit grower is faced losing everything they own. Young scales disperse to other plants by the wind. The insects pierce a plant to feed from the phloem tissues. Safely hidden under their shells,

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scales feed and reproduce with impunity.

Scales are frequently named for the plant on which they were first discovered, i.e. soft brown scale (Coccus hesperidum Linnaeus) on citrus, hemispherical scale (Saissetia coffeae Walker) on coffee, and black scale (Saissetia oleae Olivier) on olives.

In 1898, Albert Koebele returned from Australia with a minute wasp that laid its eggs in soft brown scales, a pest of the citrus groves in California. The parasitoid, named Metaphycus alberti [me taf' i cus al ber' ti] (Howard) in honor of Koebele, is even tiny compared to a scale. The females, only one to two millimeters in length, pierce the shell of the scale and lay several eggs. The larval wasps are precocious--they hatch and consume the scale's soft body parts in groups. They emerge ready to mate and seek out other scales. The only problem with Metaphycus alberti is that the wasp was host-specific; it only used soft brown scale.

Entomologists have since discovered other Metaphycus species and they have had a chance to study the wasps. Metaphycus larvae do not always succeed in hatching. According to Steve Stauffer with IPM of Cornell University, soft scales encapsulate the eggs surrounding them with hemocytes (blood cells) that wall the larvae away from the other body parts; larval wasps often never survive encapsulation. Still, Metaphycus succeed in controlling scales. ("Metaphycus alberti", Biological Control, IPM, Cornell University)

Although Metaphycus larvae parasitize scale, adult females are predators. The females will make a hole in the scale and consume the scale's body fluids. Of the scales killed by Metaphycus wasps, it is estimated that ten were eaten by the females to every one parasitized by the young.

Integrated Pest Management of Alaska has a photograph of Metaphycus helvolus and parasitized scales. To view the photographs and learn more about Metaphycus, click on the link:

http://www.ipmofalaska.com/files/Metaphycus.html

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