Phytoseius finitimus Ribaga

Abo-Shnaf, Reham I. A. & De, Gilberto J., 2014, Phytoseiid mites (Acari: Phytoseiidae) from Egypt, with new records, descriptions of new species, and a key to species, Zootaxa 3865 (1), pp. 1-71 : 35

Phytoseius finitimus Ribaga

Phytoseius finitimus Ribaga, 1904: 178 ; Nesbitt, 1951: 58; Wysoki & Swirski, 1971: 60; Swirski & Amitai, 1985: 184; Zaher, 1986: 116; Çobanoǧlu, 1989a: 60; Moraes et al., 2004: 252; Chant & McMurtry, 2007: 129; Kreiter et al., 2010: 160; Faraji et al., 2011: 230; Barbar, 2013: 254 ; Tixier et al., 2013: 113 .

Kampimodromus dubinini Beglyarov, 1958: 116 . (synonymy by Pritchard & Baker, 1962: 224).

Phytoseius (Dubininellus) finitimus . — Wainstein, 1959: 1361.

Phytoseius (Pennaseius) finitimus . — Pritchard & Baker, 1962: 224; Ehara, 1966: 25; Moraes et al., 1986: 216.

Pennaseius finitimus . — Schuster & Pritchard, 1963: 279.

Phytoseius (Phytoseius) finitimus . — Denmark, 1966: 16; Swirski & Ragusa, 1976: 119.

Suspected senior synonym of Phytoseius (Phytoseius) balcanicus Wainstein, 1969: 1743 . (Swirski & Ragusa, 1976: 120).

Gamasus plumifer Canestrini & Fanzago, 1876: 131 . (synonymy by Wainstein, 1970: 1727; not synonym, according to Duso & Fontana, 2002: 133; Faraji et al., 2011: 231).

Previous records from Egypt. Alexandria, Dakahlia and Minya governorates ( Zaher, 1986); Asyut, Beni Suef, Damietta, Monufia and Qualyubia governorates ( Nasr et al., 2011).

Remarks. No additional specimens of this species were found in this study. It was originally described from the holotype female collected in Italy. The original description was very brief, with no illustration and with measurements only of the idiosoma. No information about the types was provided. There is a great confusion in the literature concerning the true identity of P. finitimus and P. plumifer and whether or not they are synonyms. These have been considered synonyms by several authors (references in Demite et al., 2014), but Duso & Fontana (2002) considered them to be different species. The latter interpretation is adopted in this publication. Based on the illustration provided by E1- Badry (1970), it seems that the species he reported as P. plumifer refers to P. finitimus , which was reported from Egypt by Zaher (1986). Nothing can be said about the reports of P. plumifer by El-Badry (1967a), Rasmy & Abou-Awad (1972) and Yousef et al. (1976), given that morphological characteristics of the specimens they examined were not provided. Thus, P. plumifer is not included in this publication, because available evidence suggests that reports of this species in Egypt actually correspond to P. finitimus . The most recent complementary description of specimens reported as P. finitimus , from Syria, was provided by Barbar (2013). Although measurements were not given by Zaher (1986), his illustration of P. finitimus seems to fit the complementary description of Barbar (2013).