Certain aspects of the biology and life history of other Cybocephalus species have

been studied, typically as part of biological control projects, e.g., Cybocephalus rufifrons

Reitter (De Marzo 1995), Cybocephalusfreyi Endr6dy-Younga (Lupi 2003), and

Cybocephalusfodori Endr6dy-Younga (Katsoyannos 1984) have been studied in Europe;

and Cybocephalus semiflavus Champion (Ahmad 1970) and Cybocephalus gibbulus

Erichson (Nohara and Iwata 1988) have been studied in Asia. In the Middle East, several

studies have been carried out on C. aegyptiacus, C. binotatus, C. micans, and C. n.

nigriceps (Blumberg 1973, 1976; Blumberg and Swirski 1974 a,b, 1982). In Australia,

Kirejtshuk et al. (1997) described Cybocephalus aleyrodephagus and studied its life

cycle. The life histories of these species do not differ dramatically from C. nipponicus,

and there seems to be fairly consistent life cycle and feeding habits.

 In the absence of prey, female cybocephalids are able to withhold eggs for up to 2

days, indicating that oviposition strategy is not only governed by food consumption but

also by qualitative features of the scale population (Alvarez and Van Driesche 1998b). In

the presence of high scale density, cybocephalids increase egg production until an

asymptote is reached. Again, this allows cybocephalids to maintain their populations at

low scale densities. If circumstances allow, female cybocephalids will lay only one egg

under a single scale cover. However, if the number of scales in a patch is low, and the

beetle cannot find new scales, it will lay eggs under a scale under which eggs are already

present (Alvarez and Van Driesche 1998b). The beetle larvae are forced to consume

more prey when feeding on younger scales, therefore for greater offspring survivability

female cybocephalids prefer oviposition on older scales that provide a larger food source

and require less searching (Alvarez and Van Driesche 1998b). Alvarez and Van Driesche