A new species of pasture mealybug, Heliococcus novovillei Powell and Miller (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae), is responsible for damage of pasture and sugarcane in North America, but Heliococcus summervillei Brookes is here, too

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Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Insecta mundi
Published
2026-09-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.64338/im.1205.w93uh
Primary Topic
Research on scale insects
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
Controls
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article

A new species of pasture mealybug, Heliococcus novovillei Powell and Miller (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae), is responsible for damage of pasture and sugarcane in North America, but Heliococcus summervillei Brookes is here, too

Erin C. Powell, Matthew R. Moore, Ian C. Stocks, Douglass R. Miller et al.
Insecta mundi
Research on scale insects
article

A new species of pasture mealybug, Heliococcus novovillei Powell and Miller (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae), is responsible for damage of pasture and sugarcane in North America, but Heliococcus summervillei Brookes is here, too

Erin C. Powell, Matthew R. Moore, Ian C. Stocks, Douglass R. Miller, Zachary Lahey, Jason L. Mottern, Ethan Gamble
article en

Abstract

The modern outbreak of pasture mealybug causing "pasture dieback" in eastern Australia was long thought to be a new "variant" of Heliococcus summervillei Brookes (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae). However, major, consistent morphological differences and distinct differences in the sequence data (8.6% COI difference, 1.6% difference in 28S D2/D3, and 1.3% difference in 18S) between the two variants support that these are two separate species. Herein, we describe Heliococcus novovillei Powell and Miller, new species, the new pasture mealybug that has caused major pasture dieback and "yellow canopy syndrome" in Australia for over a decade and, as of at least 2025, is causing major damage to pasture grass and sugarcane in the southern United States (Florida, Louisiana, Texas) and Mexico. Both H. summervillei and H. novovillei are present in Australia but, remarkably, both have now been detected in the United States (Florida and Texas). We posit that H. summervillei may have been introduced to the United States earlier and is not present at damaging levels. Instead, it is the far more abundant H. novovillei that is now at outbreak infestation levels in Australia and the United States. We provide the history of this taxonomic conundrum, descriptions, illustrations, images, sequence data, useful primers for rapid identification, and host data for both H. novovillei and H. summervillei.

Insecta mundi
Life in Land
Openalex Percentile: Top 11%
Research on scale insects
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