Phytoseiulus persimilis Athias-Henriot, 1957

Phytoseiulus persimilis Athias-Henriot, 1957a: 347 .

Phytoseiulus riegeli .—Dosse, 1958: 48.

Typhlodromus persimilis .—Hirschmann, 1962: 75.

Phytoseiulus (Phytoseiulus) persimilis .—Wainstein, 1962: 17. Phytoseiulus tardi . — Kennett & Caltagirone, 1968: 571.

Phytoseiulus persimilis .—Chant, 1959: 109; Moraes et al., 2004: 169; Chant & McMurtry, 2007: 53.

Phytoseiulus persimilis is one of the best-known phytoseiid species in the world, because of its use to control T. urticae in greenhouses all over the world. This species is distributed world-wide especially because it is commercialised. It was first described from Algeria on Rosa sp. and until the 1970’s mainly reported from the Mediterranean region (Kanouh et al., 2010a; Kreiter et al., 2010). This species was already known from Morocco, reported by McMurtry & Bounfour (1989) and Tixier et al. (2003). It was quite often presently observed on wild plants in various regions of Morocco, suggesting its presence outside of crops.

Specimens examined: 2002, Bouazza on Ricinus communis (Euphorbiaceae) (5 females, 4 males), Meknes University on Stachys ocymastum (Lamiaceae) (5 females, 2 males), Vicia benghalensis (Fabaceae) (1 female), Road from El-Jadida to Casablanca on Solananum sodomeum (Solanaceae) (1 female), Botanical Garden of Meknes on Malva sp. ( Malvaceae) (1 female), unknown plant (3 females), Ouled Abbou on Malva sp. ( Malvaceae) (1 female).

Previous records: Algeria, Australia, Canada, Canary Islands, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Finland, France, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan (Ohno et al. 2012), Jordan, Lybia, Morocco, New Caledonia, Peru, Portugal, Reunion Island, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, USA, Venezuela.