Phenacoccus solani Ferris, 1918

Chatzidimitriou, Evangelia, Simonato, Mauro, Watson, Gillian W., Martinez-Sañudo, Isabel, Tanaka, Hirotaka, Zhao, Jing & Pellizzari, Giuseppina, 2016, Are Phenacoccus solani Ferris and P. defectus Ferris (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) distinct species?, Zootaxa 4093 (4), pp. 539-551 : 540

Phenacoccus solani Ferris, 1918

Phenacoccus solani was described from specimens collected on roots of Hemizonia rudis (Asteraceae) in California, Santa Clara County, Palo Alto (Ferris 1918) and later recorded from several other U.S. states (McKenzie 1967); currently it is almost cosmopolitan, having been recorded from the Nearctic, Neotropical, Palaearctic, Afrotropical, Oriental and Australasian Regions (García et al. 2016). It is highly polyphagous, most commonly found on Solanaceae , and can cause significant damage to cultivated sweet pepper ( Capsicum annuum ) and many ornamentals.

The first incursion of P. s ol an i in the Mediterranean Region was in Sicily (Mazzeo et al. 1999); later it was recorded from Israel, Turkey and Spain (Ben-Dov 2005; Kaydan et al. 2008; Beltrà & Soto 2011). Lloyd (1952) showed that P. s o l a ni is a parthenogenetic, thelyotokous species, (confirmed by Ben-Dov 2005) and McKenzie (1967) said it is viviparous; however, at that time workers did not distinguish between viviparity and ovoviviparity. True viviparity is rare in insects so we consider P. solani to be ovoviviparous. No males have been recorded for P. solani so it is likely that it reproduces parthenognetically.