Tachardiella resinata (Kieffer & Herbst) Kieffer & Herbst, 2010

Kondo, Takumasa & Gullan, Penny J., 2010, The Coccidae (Hemiptera: Coccoidea) of Chile, with descriptions of three new species and transfer of Lecanium resinatum Kieffer & Herbst to the Kerriidae, Zootaxa 2560, pp. 1-15 : 2

Tachardiella resinata (Kieffer & Herbst) , comb. nov.

Lecanium resinatum Kieffer & Herbst, 1909: 122 .

Coccus resinatum ; Ben-Dov, 1993: 88 (change of combination). Coccus resinatus ; Williams & Ben-Dov, 2009: 41 (justified emendation).

Many scale insect species described in the genus Lecanium Burmeister (now an unavailable name) are soft scale insects and a number have been transferred to the genus Coccus (see Williams & Ben-Dov, 2009). Presumably, this was the reason that Ben-Dov (1993) transferred L. resinatum to Coccus . Kieffer & Herbst (1909) described this scale insect from the host plant Baccharis rosmarinifolia (Asteraceae) , which is now Baccharis linearis ( Tropicos, 2010) , from Concepcion, Chile. The original description is in German and the claim ( Ben-Dov, 1993), which has been perpetuated by others (e.g., Gullan et al., 2005), that this species induces a gall is based on a misinterpretation of the description, which refers to these insects producing "Harzgallen", which literally translates to "resin galls". These structures are described as yellow, tending to spherical or hemispherical, attaining 4–5 mm in diameter, sessile, and usually densely packed. Resinous tests are produced by several scale insect groups, including the lac insects ( Kerriidae ). It seems certain that C. resinatus is a kerriid because Kieffer’s & Herbst’s (1990) description of the red “larvae”, the first-instar nymphs, matches that of kerriid nymphs. Two genera of Kerriidae , Austrotachardiella Chamberlin and Tachardiella Cockerell , are widespread in South America ( Ben-Dov, 2006) and it cannot be established with certainty to which genus C. resinatus belongs because there is no type material. However, only Tachardiella species have been found on Asteraceae , including T. pustulans (Cockerell) on Baccharis from the southwestern USA. Furthermore, the resinous tests of adult females of Tachardiella species are usually globular, as in C. resinatus , whereas those of Austrotachardiella species usually have various projections or processes. Here we transfer Lecanium resinatum to Tachardiella as T. resinata (Kieffer & Herbst) comb. nov., until the identity of this species can be investigated further based on collections made from the host plant in the region of the type locality.