The brown soft scales, Coccus hesperidum (Linnaeus, 1758) is one of the most widely distributed species in the family Coccidae. Interestingly, this species shows considerable morphological variation depending upon the geography and host plants. Although, Korean populations also exhibit morphological variation between geographical regions, this species have been regarded as one species without intensive studies. In this study, we performed Neighbor joining analysis of combined data set of Cytochrome oxidase subunit I COI, 18S ribosomal RNA 18S rRNA, 28S ribosomal RNA 28S rRNA and Elongation factor I-alpha EFI-α genes for Korean populations of brown soft scales. The result of molecular analysis indicated that there are three distinct populations in Korea. Among three populations, one population is separated from two populations with 9% of molecular divergence. Based on high level of molecular divergence, we propose a cryptic species of C. hesperidum with description and illustrations of morphology.

• Jinyeong Choi(Laboratory of insect Biosystematics, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University, Research Institute of Agricultural and Life Science, Seoul National University)
• Yerim Lee(Laboratory of insect Biosystematics, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University, Research Institute of Agricultural and Life Science, Seoul National University)
• Seunghwan Lee(Laboratory of insect Biosystematics, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University, Research Institute of Agricultural and Life Science, Seoul National University)