Newsteadia myersi is the only member of the scale insect

Scale insect

The scale insects are small insects of the order Hemiptera, generally classified as the superfamily Coccoidea. There are about 8,000 species of scale insects.-Ecology:...

 family Ortheziidae

Ortheziidae

Ortheziidae is a family of scale insects commonly known as the ensign scales or ortheziids. They occur in most parts of the world but the majority of the species are found in the Neotropics and Nearctic regions while there are not many species in Australasia and the Far East...

 to have been found in New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. It was found by sifting through the leaf litter and debris under nikau

Nikau

Nikau is a palm tree, the only palm endemic to New Zealand.-Etymology:Nīkau is a Māori word; in the closely related Eastern Polynesian languages of the tropical Pacific, it refers to the fronds or the midrib of the coconut palm.- Distribution:The Nikau palm is the only palm species endemic to...

 palm trees (Rhopalostylis sapida).

Description

The adult female has a rounded oval body with inconspicuous segmentation. It is about 1.1 millimetres long by 0.85 millimetres wide. The rounded eyes are on short stalks located near the base of the antennae

Antenna (biology)

Antennae in biology have historically been paired appendages used for sensing in arthropods. More recently, the term has also been applied to cilium structures present in most cell types of eukaryotes....

 which are slender, about 0.7 millimetres long and normally have four segments. The legs are long and slender with a small number of seta

Seta

Seta is a biological term derived from the Latin word for "bristle". It refers to a number of different bristle- or hair-like structures on living organisms.-Animal setae:In zoology, most "setae" occur in invertebrates....

e. The upper side of the body has ten bands of short spines which are wide at the base and quickly taper to the tip. The underside is also banded with spines and the anterior section of the ovisac band is thickly covered with rather larger spines. The underside has a spiracle

Spiracle

Spiracles are openings on the surface of some animals that usually lead to respiratory systems.-Vertebrates:The spiracle is a small hole behind each eye that opens to the mouth in some fishes. In the primitive jawless fish the first gill opening immediately behind the mouth is essentially similar...

 on each segment. The anal ring is surrounded by a double row of pores and has a bunch of six backward pointing setae.

Biology

Very little is known of the life history of this species but it is likely to have four instar

Instar

An instar is a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each molt , until sexual maturity is reached. Arthropods must shed the exoskeleton in order to grow or assume a new form. Differences between instars can often be seen in altered body proportions, colors, patterns, or...

s as in other members of the genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

. It may feed on the hypha

Hypha

A hypha is a long, branching filamentous structure of a fungus, and also of unrelated Actinobacteria. In most fungi, hyphae are the main mode of vegetative growth, and are collectively called a mycelium; yeasts are unicellular fungi that do not grow as hyphae.-Structure:A hypha consists of one or...

e of fungi growing in the leaf litter where it lives, or possibly on the living roots of plants.