Overview
The intricate beauty of these bugs, combined with their often distinctive reticulated wings and pronotum, has contributed to their comon name - the lace bugs.
Tingids feed on plant fluids and can often be collected on the host plant from the underside of leaves. Some tingids restrict their feeding to a single host species (monophagous) while some feed of a variety of species that are usually closely related (oligophagous). Monophagous tingids can be useful in the biological control of weeds due to their preference for feeding on only one plant, and have been successfully employed to control the weed
Lantana camara
in Australia.
The Tingidae are one of the few Heteroptea families in which maternal care of the nymphs has been recorded, though not all species undertake this task. This is presumed to increase the survival rate of the young and ensure that the next generation of tingids matures to adulthood.
Distribution
Both subfamilies of the Tingidae are reported from Australia. The Cantacaderinae is the smaller of the two, containing only 5 genera and 11 species concentrated in Tasmania and the eastern half of the Australian mainland . The Tinginae is found in all states and contains 51 genera and 137 species.