Calico Scale: Appearance, Territory, Damage and Life

Latin name: Eulecanium Cerasorum

Appearances: It is distinguishable by the white and brown coloring on its round outer shell, which will continue to deepen with time. Its diameter is around one-quarter of an inch.

The mature female has a spherical shape with a diameter of around 1/4 inch. Living mature females are black or dark brown with four rows of white or yellow patches, giving them a mottled (calico) appearance. On the light spots, there may be tiny patches of fuzzy wax. The nymphs are flattened, dark brown in color, and coated in thick, elevated pale wax plates.

Host plants: Dogwoods, honey locust, magnolias, maples, sweetgums, and fruit trees are just a few of the American trees that are harmed by the calico scale. Typically, this pest attacks the branches.

Territory: They mostly found in United States.

Damage insect caused: Scale nymphs and adult females consume twig phloem sap. When they eat, they exude gooey honeydew, on which blackish sooty mold forms. Low populations do not harm plants, but if the scale is numerous for several years in a row, liquidambar, the preferred host in California, may suffer. Calico scale adults and nymphs (crawlers), like all soft scales, ingest food by sticking their piercing-sucking mouthparts into phloem vessels. In order to obtain the meagre number of amino acids dissolved in the sap that are needed to create proteins, they must extract a sizable portion of the sugary sap that is flowing through the vessels.

Life cycle and history: Adult and nymph. Second instars that overwinter develop into adult females who lay eggs beneath their bodies in late winter. The crawlers (mobile first instars) that emerge from the eggs in the spring travel to a new location to settle and feed on leaves. In the summer, nymphs molt to the second instar. The second instars migrate to twigs to spend the winter in the fall. Every year, there is one generation. Southwest Ohio calico scale females are just half to seventy percent of their mature size right now. As they develop toward egg production, they will continue to spit honeydew. Populations can grow quickly since females can lay more than 1,000 eggs each.