Armored Scale Insects (Hemiptera: Diaspididae) of San Lorenzo National Park, Panama, with Descriptions of Two New Species

Abstract

Abstract Armored scale insects include invasive economic pests that have been widely studied in human-altered habitats but have received less attention in natural habitats. Although armored scale insects are nearly ubiquitous associates of woody plants, they generally go uncollected in general surveys because they are not susceptible to mass collecting techniques, such as fogging, beating, or trapping. San Lorenzo National Park in Panama was the subject of a recent high-profile effort to quantify the arthropod diversity in a tropical forest (Basset et al. 2012). Here, we contribute to understanding the biodiversity of this classic site by reporting the armored scale insect species we found there in August 2010. We found that, unlike other rainforest canopy taxa, the armored scale insect fauna is dominated by highly polyphagous cosmopolitan pests. However, we also found new species, and we describe two of them here: Furcaspis douglorum Okusu & Normark n. sp. and Hemiberlesia andradae Okusu & Normark n. sp. We provide amendments to the relevant keys, including a new key to New World species of Hemiberlesia Cockerell that lack perivulvar pores. In this context, we treat Abgrallaspis Balachowsky as asubjective synonym of Hemiberlesia, and we transfer its species to Hemiberlesia, except for the following assignments to other genera Affirmaspis flavida (De Lotto), n. comb., Aspidiotus furcillae Brain, rev. comb., Clavaspis perseae (Davidson), n. comb., Diaspidiotus fraxini (McKenzie), n. comb., and Davidsonaspis aguacatae (Evans, Watson, and Miller), n. comb. Davidsonaspis Normark, n. gen. We regard Abgrallaspis azadirachti Ojha and A narainus Dutta & Singh as synonyms of Aonidiella orientalis (Newstead), new synonymy.