(Homoptera: Coccoidea: Coccidae)
Issue No. 281
Avas B. Hamon
February, 1986
Introduction
The soft scale genus Philephedra was originally described as a subgenus of Pulvinaria by Cockerell (1898), with Pulvinaria ephedrae as the type species. Cockerell (1902) later elevated the subgenus to generic level. Nakahara and Gill (1985) transferred 5 species from Lichtensia to Philephedra, and described 2 new species of Philephedra from Florida. The genus Philephedra now contains 9 species known only from the New World (Nakahara and Gill, 1985). The new species from Florida described by Nakahara and Gill (1985) are Philephedra floridana and tuberculosa.