The genus Dactylopius is the only genus at present in the family Dactylopiidae. Since the name Dactylopius was proposed in 1829, however, numerous other species names belonging to different families of scale insects have been combined with it and these are also listed. The present status and the family placement are also given for each species.

The soft scale, Pulvinaria tenuivalvata (Newstead, 1911), is a major pest of sugarcane in Egypt. This paper provides a redescription and illustration of the adult female based on a microscopic study of the morphology of several adult female specimens and of the type series illustrated by De Lotto (1965) on citronella grass from Uganda. Two paratypes of Pulvinaria saccharia De Lotto, 1964 are al...