Neoseiulus lula (Pritchard & Baker)

Kreiter, Serge, Payet, Rose-My & Azali, Hamza Abdou, 2021, Phytoseiid mites (Acari: Mesostigmata) of Anjouan Island (Comoros Archipelago), Acarologia 61 (1), pp. 62-83 : 64

Neoseiulus lula (Pritchard & Baker)

Amblyseius (Amblyseius) lula Pritchard & Baker 1962: 239 .

Neoseiulus lula, Schicha 1981b: 212 ; Moraes et al. 1986: 87, 2004b: 130 ; Chant & McMurtry 2003a: 27, 2007: 29.

Amblyseius (Amblyseius) insignitus van der Merwe 1968: 138 (synonymy according to Ueckermann & Loots 1988).

This species belongs to the paspalivorus species group of the genus Neoseiulus ( Chant and

McMurtry 2003a). Its biology remains totally unknown. It is distributed in several countries and islands of sub­Saharan Africa but also in Cuba (Suarez 2004; Moraes et al. 2004a).

Specimens examined: a single ♀ specimen collected during this study. Pomoni, exit of the village (34 m aasl, 12°17 ′ 01 ″ S, 44°24 ′ 52 ″ E), 1 ♀ on Cymbopogon citratus (De Candolle)

Stapf ( Poaceae ), 30/XI/2018.

Remarks: the measurements of the single female of N. lula ( Table 1) fit well with the type materials from Central Africa ( Schicha 1981b) and those of specimens from Africa ( Zannou et al. 2006) as well as from La Réunion ( Kreiter et al. 2020d). When compared to other specimens from sub­Saharan Africa studied by Zannou et al. (2006), our specimen has shorter

Z4 and relatively longer ventrianal shield. Specimens from South Africa and Madagascar (van der Merwe 1968; Ueckermann and Loots 1988) have in general greater dimensions than those obtained for specimens from La Réunion ( Kreiter et al. 2020d) and Anjouan Islands.