Phytoseiid mites of Slovenia (Acari: Mesostigmata): new records and first description of the male of Amblyseius microorientalis

Abstract

Slovenia is a small country of Central Europe. Until recently, only limited surveys had been carried out of the Phytoseiidae fauna. The occurrence of 14 species had been documented in two international papers: 6 belonging to the subfamily Amblyseiinae, 1 to the subfamily Phytoseiinae and 7 to the subfamily Typhlodrominae. Four additional species (3 Amblyseiinae and 1 Phytoseiinae) were recorded and published recently but in a national journal and not mentioned in the world online database of Phytoseiidae. Here, we present results from 2018 and 2019 field surveys and add a total of 22 new records (18 if we consider national published records): 14 Amblyseiinae, 3 Phytoseiinae and 5 Typhlodrominae. The Phytoseiidae fauna of Slovenia contains after our study 36 species: 20 Amblyseiinae, 4 Phytoseiinae and 12 Typhlodrominae. Among the 22 new record species, at least 8 species are well-known biological control agents (BCA). In addition to the intrinsic value of phytoseiid mite biodiversity in temperate environments, demonstration of the natural occurrence of efficient BCAs is of great agricultural, commercial and strategic interests.

New records of phytoseiid mites from Mauritius Island (Acari: Mesostigmata)

“…Euseius gallicus Kreiter and Tixier in Tixier et al 2010: 242. This species was described from Southern France (Tixier et al 2010). It had also been recorded from Tunisia, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and Turkey (Kreiter et al 2010;Döker et al 2014) and recently from Slovenia (Kreiter et al 2020a).…”

Phytoseiidae of Vietnam (Acari: Mesostigmata) with description of a new species

“…Several species in the family are important natural enemies of phytophagous mites, insect eggs and small (or immature) insects in natural habitats, arable field crops and protected crops globally (McMurtry and Croft 1997;McMurtry et al 2013). Despite the extensive faunistic surveys carried out for more than 70 years worldwide, the fauna of certain countries and ecosystems remains little explored (Tixier and Kreiter, 2009;Kreiter et al 2020a). Consequently, it is important to conduct surveys in these poorly-investigated areas and gain more information on resident biodiversity, especially in hotspots of biodiversity.…”

Species complexes of leaf-inhabiting mites on Prunus laurocerasus L. (Rosaceae) trees in Ordu, Turkey

“…It was recorded on citrus (McMurtry, 1977;Çobanoğlu, 1989b), cucumber (Çobanoğlu, 1989a), pome fruits (Akyol, 2019), walnut leaves (Çakır et al, 2020) and olive trees (Ersin et al, 2020) (Çakır et al, 2020). This mite is a Type IV-pollen feeding generalist predator (Kreiter et al, 2020).…”