Oscheius Andrássy, 1976

Sudhaus, Walter, 2023, An update of the catalogue of paraphyletic ‘ Rhabditidae’ (Nematoda) after eleven years, Soil Organisms 95 (1), pp. 95-116 : 105-106

Oscheius Andrássy, 1976

Type species: Rhabditis insectivora Körner, 1954

27 valid species were listed in catalogue 2011. Here twelve new species are added.

Dolichura clade (now 16 species)

• O. karachiensis Nasir & Tabassum, 2018 – Saeedabad, Karachi, Pakistan; soil around the roots of chicko tree ( Manilkara zapota ), baited with Galleria mellonella larvae.

• O. onirici Torrini, Mazza, Carletti, Benvenuti, Roversi, Fanelli, De Luca, Troccoli, & Tarasco, 2015 – cave ‘Grotta del Lago’ in the Monti Pisani area, Pisa province, Italy; soil, using the Galleria mellonella bait method.

• O. saproxylicus Abolafia & Peña-Santiago, 2019 (2019a) – Puente de la Sierra, Jaén province, Southern Spain; from decaying wood (white poplar tree) from an orchard.

Insectivorus clade (now 23 species)

Some of the here listed species are supposed to be synonymous (see Rana et al. 2021).

• O. basothovii Lephoto & Gray, 2019 – Heidelberg at the Suikerbosrand Nature Reserve, South Africa; grassland, isolated from the soil by the bait method using Galleria mellonella larvae

• O. citri Tabassum, Shahina, Nasira & Erum, 2016 – Gadap, Sindh, Pakistan; soil around the roots of citrus (Citrus sp.), baited using Galleria mellonella larvae. – I follow the synonymisations by Rana et al. (2021). (This name has page priority.)

syn. O. cobbi Tabassum, Shahina, Nasira & Erum, 2016 – University of Karachi, Karachi, Pakistan; from soil around the roots of bermuda grass ( Cynodon dactylon ), baited using Galleria mellonella larvae.

– O. cynodonti Tabassum, Shahina, Nasira & Erum, 2016 – Islamabad, Pakistan; soil around the roots of bermuda grass ( Cynodon dactylon ), baited using Galleria mellonella larvae.

– O. esculentus Tabassum, Shahina, Nasira & Erum, 2016 – Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan; soil around the roots of okra ( Abelmoschus esculentus ), baited using Galleria mellonella larvae.

– O. punctatus Tabassum, Shahina, Nasira & Erum, 2016 – University of Karachi, Karachi, Pakistan; soil around the roots of bermuda grass ( Cynodon dactylon ), baited using Galleria mellonella larvae.

– O. sacchari Tabassum, Shahina, Nasira & Erum, 2016 – Nawabshah, Sindh, Pakistan; from a dead moth from sugarcane ( Saccharum officinarum ) field.

• O. cyrus Kuhestani, Karimi, Shokoohi & Makhdoumi, 2022 – Dalkhani forest, Ramsar city, Mazandaran Province, Iran; moist soil from forest heights, baited with last instar larvae of Galleria mellonella ; dominant associated bacterium is Ochrobactrum pseudogrignonense .

• O. indicus Kumar, Jamal, Somvanshi, Chauhan & Mumtaz, 2019 – district Cachar, Assam, India; extracted from soil of fallow field.

• O. nadarajani Ali, Asif & Shaheen, 2011 – village Kurmikhera, Unnao district, Uttar Pradesh, India; soil from the rhizosphere of lentil ( Lens culinaris ), isolated by insect baiting technique and cultured on larvae of the moth Corcyra cephalonica .

• O. niazii Tabassum&Shahina,2010 – Niaz Manzil, North Nazimabad, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan; soil around roots of palm tree ( Cocos nucifera ), baited using Galleria mellonella larvae.

• O. rugaoensis ( Zhang, Liu, Tan, Wang, Qiao, Yedid, Dai, Qiu, Yan, Tan, Su, Lai & Gao, 2012) = Heterorhabditidoides rugaoensis Zhang, Liu, Tan, Wang, Qiao, Yedid, Dai, Qiu, Yan, Tan, Su, Lai & Gao, 2012 (type isolate RG081015 ) – near Rugao , Jiangsu province, China; soil from farmland, using the Galleria mellonella baiting method. – Oscheius rugaoensis newly was proposed as a junior synonym of O. chongmingensis (Zhang, Liu, Xu, Sun, Yang, An, Gao, Lin, Lai, He, Wu & Zhang, 2008) by Bhat et al. (2021).

• O. safricanus Serepa-Dlamini & Gray, 2018 – Brits, North West province of South Africa; isolated from soil of a citrus farm using the Galleria mellonella bait method. – As the authors had a mixture of different species, the description is inherently contradictory.

• O. siddiqii Tabassum & Shahina, 2010 – Karachi University, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan; soil around the roots of rose ( Rosa damascena ) bush, baited using Galleria mellonella larvae.

Without presenting new material Abolafia & Peña-Santiago (2019a) reinstated O. debilicauda (Fuchs, 1937) and O. oxyuris (Claus, 1862) and excluded O. pheropsophi (Smart & Nguyen, 1994) from Oscheius . I cannot agree with any of these proposals. With respect to the lips, lateral ridges, pharynx corpus, excretory duct, female rectum and arrangement and orientation of 9 bursal papillae plus terminal phasmids O. pheropsophi belongs to the Dolichura group of Oscheius . The fused spicules are certainly unique.