Phytoseius amba Pritchard & Baker, 1962

Kreiter, Serge, Payet, Rose-My, Fillâtre, Jacques & Azali, Hamza Abdou, 2018, First records of Phytoseiidae (Acari: Mesostigmata) from one island of the Comoros Archipelago, Acarologia 58 (3), pp. 529-545 : 540

Phytoseius amba Pritchard & Baker

Phytoseius (Pennaseius) amba Pritchard & Baker 1962: 224 ; Blommers, 1976: 85;

Phytoseius (Phytoseius) amba , Denmark, 1966: 49;

Typhlodromus (Pizytoseius) amba, Van der Merwe, 1968: 101 ;

Phytoseius amba, Swirski & Ragusa, 1978: 408 ;

Pennaseius amba, Matthysse & Denmark, 1981: 352 ;

Phytoseius amba, Moraes et al., 1986: 210 ; 2004: 232; Chant & McMurtry, 2007: 129.

Species of the genus Phytoseius are supposed to belong to the Type III species ( McMurtry and Croft 1997; McMurtry et al. 2013), i.e. a polyphagous generalist predator. However, the biology of Phytoseius amba remains totally unknown.

Specimens examined — Mdé, INRAPE (long. 11°41′S, lat. 43°14′E, alt. 50 m), 1 ♀ on Annona muricata L. ( Annonaceae ), 2-02-2017.

Previous Records — Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, DR Congo, Kenya, Madagascar Island, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Reunion Island, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Remarks ( Table 6) — The setae lengths seem very variable in this species following data of the literature. Measurements of the single adult female ( Table 6) agree well with measurements of the literature, especially with those of Ueckermann et al. (2007) obtained with a great number of specimens (29) from various countries in Africa, with the exception of longer j3 and z3, shorter st5-st5, ventrianal shield length and width at the level of anus and macrosetae of the basitarsus and telotarsus.