Afrodinychus, Kontschán & Starý, 2013

Kontschán, Jenő & Starý, Josef, 2013, New Uropodine mites from Tanzania (Acari: Mesostigmata), Zootaxa 3683 (3), pp. 267-279 : 274-275

Afrodinychus gen. nov.

Type species. Afrodinychus africanus sp. nov.

Diagnosis. Idiosoma oval, marginal and dorsal shields completely separated. Dorsal shield ornamented by oval pits, caudal part of dorsal shield elevated. All dorsal shield setae short, smooth and needle-like. Marginal shield complete, not reduced, bearing needle-like setae. Genital shield of female linguliform, without anterior process. Peritreme anterior to stigmata long and V-shaped, post-stigmatal section short. Pedofossae reduced, metapodal line strongly developed and bearing several serrate setae. Hypostomal setae h1 long, needle-like. Corniculi small and horn-like, internal malae short and weakly developed. Fixed digit of chelicerae longer than movable digit, cheliceral internal sclerotised nodes absent. One ventral seta on palp trochanter situated on a small protuberance. Epistome with two apical branches. Leg I without ambulacral claws. Genital shield of male rounded and located between coxae IV.

Etymology. The name of the new genus refers to the name of the related genus Metadinychus , and the continent of Africa, where the type species was collected. Gender neuter.

Remarks. The new genus is similar to Metadinychus Berlese, 1916 on the basis of the shape of the idiosoma, the absence of pedofossae and the presence of the strongly developed metapodal line. The differences between these two genera are presented in Table 3 .

The genus Metadinychus was described by Berlese (1916) for the species M. argasiformis , but later Hirschmann and co-workers considered Metadinychus as a subgenus of Uropoda . When Hirschmann (1979) revised his earlier system, he again elevated Metadinychus to genus level. Hirschmann (1993), WiŠniewski (1993), and WiŠniewski & Hirschmann (1993) then placed all Metadinychus species back into the genus Uropoda as the argasiformis species group. We consider Metadinychus a well-defined genus in the family Uropodidae , easily separated from other similar genera. Metadinychus includes 12 South American and African species. Both Afrodinychus and Metadinychus differ from the genus Uropoda on the basis of the presence of strongly developed metapodal line and the absence of pedofossae.

Tables

TABLE 3. Distinguishing characters between the genera Afrodinychus and Metadinychus.

	Afrodinychus	Metadinychus
Setae on metapodal line	pilose	needle-like or spine-like
Elevated area on dorsal shield	present	absent
Anterior process on genital shield of female	absent	present
Apical part of epistome	with two branches	with one branch
Prestigmatid part of peritreme	V-shaped	straight