Book Fauna Palaestina 4 Year 2014 By Prof Dr Norman Ali Bassam Khalaf von Jaffa ISBN 978-9950-383-77-7

of them particularly valuable as agents in biological control
programmes. Determination of specialisation need not be a trivial
matter, though; for example the larva of the Vedalia
ladybird Rodolia cardinalis is a specialist predator on a few species
of Monophlebidae, in particular Icerya purchasi, which is the most
notorious of the cottony cushion scale species. However, the
adult R. cardinalis can subsist for some months on a wider range
of insects plus some nectar (Wikipedia).
Nile Striped Ladybird Beetle (Cheilomenes propinqua nilotica) from
Palestine. Photo by Oz Rittner. http://www.nature-ofoz.com/coccinellidae.htm
Certain species of coccinellids are thought to lay extra infertile
eggs with the fertile eggs, apparently to provide a backup food
source for the larvae when they hatch. The ratio of infertile to
fertile eggs increases with scarcity of food at the time of egg
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