Chloeoon Anderson, 1787

Williams, D. J., 2002, Scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccoidea) described by James Anderson M. D. of Madras, Journal of Natural History 36 (2), pp. 237-246 : 239-241

Chloeoon Anderson

Chloeoon Anderson, 1788a: 4 . Type species Kirmes [5 Kermes ] choromandelensis Anderson , on`Oopuncarugu’.

Coccus chlaeoon Anderson, Signoret, 1877: 612 ; Fernald, 1903: 325. Inadmissable change of rank.

The name Chloeoon was proposed by Anderson (1787a: 10) (letter No. 5) for an insect species found on salt grass and ®rst discussed by Anderson (1787a: 1) (letter No. 1) with a brief description. In letter No. 2, Anderson (1787a: 2, 3)

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at of by. 12 ± 1 gures ® s Anderson’

. I LATE P mentioned the grass as nearest to Aira spicata and illustrated the insect on the grass (®gure 1). His ®gure 2 of a`¯y’ is supposed to be the adult male but is described as possessing four wings. Figure 3 represents a drawing of the female showing its covering with many young insects (crawlers) on it. Anderson described ®gure 4 as the chrysalis (actually the adult female), disengaged from its silky envelope. Figure 5 of a caterpillar associated with the adult females probably represents a chrysopid larva. The grass, or`Oopuncarugu’, was eventually listed by Anderson (1788b: 25) as Aira indica of Linnaeus.

As Morrison and Morrison (1966) have stated, the genus Chloeoon was validly established. In its current combination, the name of the insect should, therefore, be Chloeoon choromandelensis (Anderson) . The ®gure of the insect on the grass is remarkably good and this led Morrison and Morrison to suggest that it represents a mealybug commonly known as Antonina graminis (Maskell), 1897 , a species also described later as A. indica Green in 1908. The actual species of Antonina would now be di cult to identify because there are at least three species in India feeding on grasses other than bamboos. Because Anderson’s species cannot be identi®ed with certainty, it seems best to agree with Morrison and Morrison (1966) that the species should remain as unidenti®able. It can almost certainly be assigned to the 14 family Pseudococcidae . Chloeoon is a generic name and it is not clear why Signoret regarded it as a species.

In his letter No. 2, Anderson (1787a: 3) distinguished the insect as Hemiptera Coccus Airae spicatae Madraspatensi s, which can be translated as Hemiptera Coccus at

of Aira spicata of the Madras region. For some extraordinary reason, Jakubski (1965) decided that this Latin description was an earlier name for Margarodes of indicus Green (family Margarodidae ), a species described by Green (1912), synonymizing Green’s name with Porphyrophora airae (Anderson) . The Latin description by Anderson has no standing as a scienti®c name and Green’s species, as proposed by Silvestri (1938), is currently known as Porphyrophora indica (Green) .