See text Icerya is a genus of scale insects in the family Monophlebidae.

[1] Hermaphroditism is extremely rare in the insect world despite the comparatively common nature of this condition in the crustaceans.

Several species of Icerya, including the pestiferous cottony-cushion scale, I. purchasi, are known to be hermaphrodites that reproduce by self-fertilising.

Occasionally males are produced from unfertilised eggs, but generally individuals are monoecious with a female-like nature but possessing an ovotestis (a part-testis, part-ovary organ) and sperm is transmitted ovarially from the female to her young.

This hermaphroditic sexual self-sufficiency, where a single individual can populate new territory, has contributed to the invasive spread of the cottony-cushion scale insect away from its native Australia.