Eharius chergui (Athias-Henriot, 1960)

Ma, Min, Fan, Qing-Hai & Zhang, Zhi-Qiang, 2018, Ontogenetic changes in the morphology of Eharius chergui (Acari: Phytoseiidae), Zootaxa 4540 (1), pp. 23-39 : 36-37

Comparison of Eharius chergui from New Zealand and Algeria

We compared ontogenetic data (mainly chaetotaxy) of E. chergui from this research with those of this species described by Athias-Henriot (1960) ( Table 4). The larvae from these two locations are different. They all have j1, j3, j4, j5, j6, z2, z4, z5, Z4, and s4 on dorsal shield, but the larvae from New Zealand have setae J5, lacking S2 and Z1 and those of Algeria have S2 and Z1 but lacking J5. In addition, the length of setae j3 of larvae in Athias- Henriot (1960) was different from those described by us; Setae j3 are as long as j1 and the pronotal shield has a pair of big solenostomes gd 2 in specimens from Algeria, whereas setae j3 are half as long as j1, and the pronotal shield has a pair of lyrifissures idla in specimens from New Zealand. Furthermore, Athias-Henriot just collected a single larva. From the comparison of larvae, there is a probability that the larva described by Athias-Henriot may be from another species on the same host; we noted this problem in Amblydromalus limonicus ( Ma et al. 2018a) .

The protonymphs of these two locations are slightly distinguishable. This study found that in the protonymph, setae S2 are knobbed in New Zealand specimens, but this was not described by Athias-Henriot (1960). The length of dorsal setae was not different between our specimens and that of Athias-Henriot ( Table 2).

L: Larva; PN: Protonymph; DNf: Deutonymph female; DNm: Deutonymph male; F: Adult female; M: Adult male; —: without the seta; *: All data from original description: Athias-Henriot (1960); ▲: without measurement and description in the original description ( Athias-Henriot 1960). The data of deutonymph male were surmised by the adult male from Algeria.