Lepidosaphes pinnaeformis (Bouché, 1851)

Mifsud, David, Mazzeo, Gaetana, Russo, Agatino & Watson, Gillian W., 2014, The scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccoidea) of the Maltese Archipelago, Zootaxa 3866 (4), pp. 499-525 : 517

Lepidosaphes pinnaeformis (Bouché, 1851)

Lepidosaphes pinnaeformis has been confused with L. beckii in the past and much of the literature pertaining to L. pinnaeformis on citrus should refer to L. beckii ( Ben-Dov et al., 2014) . Borg (1932) recorded this species as frequent on citrus trees and this record was the basis for the Malta record in the ScaleNet catalogue ( Ben-Dov et al., 2014), and probably also for the Malta record in Danzig & Watson (2014). It is worth mentioning that three of the four synonyms of L. pinnaeformis listed by Borg (1932) are incorrect and should refer to L. beckii . For these reasons, and because L. pinnaeformis was not collected in any of the recent surveys, this species is being removed from the Maltese fauna.