Paralecanium Expansum Metallicum Scale insect

Found another Paralecanium Expansum Metallicum... this time it's goldie in color.  Taken at night in Singapore forest.
Backlit melvynyeo.deviantart.com/art/P…

Quote from eol.org/pages/3707386/details

Most soft scales, and members of several other scale insect families, have a strange life cycle that involves spending almost their entire lives in a sessile (immobile) state.

Paralecanium expansum metallicum life cycle


First-stage nymphs, termed crawlers:

• hatch from eggs that are protected underneath the adult female’s body
• can walk short distances
• act as the main means of dispersal from one plant to another, or from one area to another

P. expansum metallicum crawlers provide a very effective means of dispersal as they are:

• only 0.5mm long
• extremely light
• readily carried by air currents

Once the crawler has selected a feeding site it undergoes its first moult.

From the second stage onwards
P. expansum metallicum females:

• do not have functioning legs. Adult females don't even have the vestiges of legs
• simply feed on the host plant’s phloem sap: if the plant dies, so do they

Some other soft scales do have short-but-functional legs but mobility is still extremely limited.In complete contrast to females, male scale insects have:

• long legs
• a single pair of wings in most cases
• no functioning mouthparts

So they have very limited time in which to seek out females in order to mate.


Distribution
Paralecanium expansum metallicum lives in forested tropical environments in south-east Asia.In forests, the metallic females may resemble splashes of sunlight filtering through the canopy, perhaps explaining how this feature has evolved.It, and other members of the genus Paralecanium, seems to prefer feeding on the upper surfaces of leaves.

Habitat
P. expansum metallicum develops in small colonies on the upper surfaces of the leaves of its hosts, whereas most other phytophagous bugs take advantage of the shelter afforded under the leaves.The presence of the adult female is betrayed by a silver-metallic sheen, almost certainly a form of iridescence. The living insect appears like a splash of metal solder on the leaf.While scale insects are generally regarded as pests, many are actually specially adapted to natural habitats and so habitat conservation is an issue. P. expansum metallicum is likely to be at risk from habitat loss.