A new Aceria species (Acari:Trombidiformes: Eriophyoidea) from West Asia, a potential biological control agent for the invasive weed camelthorn, Alhagi maurorum Medik. (Leguminosae) Biljana Vidović, Hashem Kamali, Radmila Petanović, Massimo Cristofaro, Philip Weyl, Asadi Ghorbanali, Tatjana Cvrković, Matthew Augé, Francesca Marini To cite this version: Biljana Vidović, Hashem Kamali, Radmila Petanović, Massimo Cristofaro, Philip Weyl, et al.. A new Aceria species (Acari:Trombidiformes: Eriophyoidea) from West Asia, a potential biological con- trol agent for the invasive weed camelthorn, Alhagi maurorum Medik. (Leguminosae) . Acarologia, Acarologia, 2018, 58 (2), pp.303-312. 10.24349/acarologia/20184243. hal-01715268 HAL Id: hal-01715268 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01715268 Submitted on 22 Feb 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NoDerivatives| 4.0 International License Acarologia A quarterly journal of acarology, since 1959 Publishing on all aspects of the Acari All information: http://www1.montpellier.inra.fr/CBGP/acarologia/ [email protected] Acarologia is proudly non-profit, with no page charges and free open access Please help us maintain this system by encouraging your institutes to subscribe to the print version of the journal and by sending us your high quality research on the Acari. Subscriptions: Year 2018 (Volume 58): 380 € http://www1.montpellier.inra.fr/CBGP/acarologia/subscribe.php Previous volumes (2010-2016): 250 € / year (4 issues) Acarologia, CBGP, CS 30016, 34988 MONTFERRIER-sur-LEZ Cedex, France The digitalization of Acarologia papers prior to 2000 was supported by Agropolis Fondation under the reference ID 1500-024 through the « Investissements d’avenir » programme (Labex Agro: ANR-10-LABX-0001-01) Acarologia is under free license and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-BY-NC-ND which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. A new Aceria species (Acari:Trombidiformes: Eriophyoidea) from West Asia, a potential biological control agent for the invasive weed camelthorn, Alhagi maurorum Medik. (Leguminosae) Biljana Vidovića , Hashem Kamalib , Radmila Petanovića , Massimo Cristofaroc , Philip Weyld , Asadi Ghorbanalie , Tatjana Cvrkovićf , Matthew Augég , Francesca Marinig a Department of Entomology and Agricultural Zoology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Belgrade, Nemanjina 6, 11080 Belgrade-Zemun, Serbia. b Khorasan Razavi Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center, P.O. Box 91735–488, Mashhad, Iran. c ENEA Casaccia, UTAGRI-ECO, via Anguillarese 301, 00123 Rome, Italy. d CABI Switzerland, Rue des Grillons 1, Delemont, Switzerland. e Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, P.O. Box 91775-1163, Mashhad, Iran. f Institute for Plant Protection and Environment, Banatska 33, 11080 Belgrade, Serbia. g BBCAonlus, Via Angelo Signorelli 105, 00123 Rome, Italy. ABSTRACT A new species of eriophyoid mite Aceria alhagi n. sp. inhabiting the weed Alhagi maurorum Medik., is described from the type locality in Iran, but it was also collected from Uzbekistan, Turkey and Armenia. This mite causes changes of the leaves and inflorescence. Infested plants develop cauliflower-like galls on the inflorescence and leaves deforming the reproductive structures and inhibiting seed production. The potential reduction in seed set suggests that this mite could constitute a potential biological control agent against this noxious weed. To investigate intraspecific variability between A. alhagi n. sp. populations from Iran, Turkey and Armenia, we analysed molecular sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (mtCOI). These results indicated that there are no significant intraspecific divergences among populations of A.alhagi n. sp. from the five different localities in three West Asia countries. This finding can be used in the future research of certain mite populations as biological control agent. Received 07 February 2017 Accepted 27 September 2017 Published 22 February 2018 Keywords Eriophyidae, weed biological control, invasive weed, mtCOI, intraspecific variability, Corresponding author phytophagous mites Biljana Vidović: Zoobank http://zoobank.org/0675CBF0-2A56-4F77-B1EC-7615D45983F0 [email protected] Academic editor Denise Navia Introduction The plant genus Alhagi belongs to the tribe Hedysareae of the Leguminosae together with DOI another eight genera: Corethrodendron, Ebens, Eversmannia, Greuteria, Hedysarum, Ono- 10.24349/acarologia/20184243 brychis, Sula and Taverniera (Duan et al. 2015). According to the Plant List database (2016), Copyright Alhagi has 9 plant species. Our target species, Alhagi maurorum Medik., is a shrub commonly Vidović B. et al. known as camelthorn, camelthorn-bush, Caspian manna, or Persian manna (CABI 2015). The Distributed under Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 How to cite this article Vidović B. et al. (2018), A new Aceria species (Acari:Trombidiformes: Eriophyoidea) from West Asia, a potential biological control agent for the invasive weed camelthorn, Alhagi maurorum Medik. (Legumi- nosae). Acarologia 58(2): 302-312; DOI 10.24349/acarologia/20184243 native range of this plant extends from Cyprus and Egypt in the West, to Mongolia and China in the East and South to India and Saudi Arabia (ILDIS 2002, Li et al. 2010). In its region of origin, camelthorn is used as a medicinal herb (Suthar et al. 2016). However no uses have been reported from the areas where it was introduced. Conversely in these areas it has become an invasive weed: in the USA it is listed as a noxious weed in seven states (USDA–NRCS 2002); Australia has declared it a state prohibited weed in Victoria (Munakamwe 2016) and in South Africa it is a declared Category 1 invasive species (AGIS–WIP 2006). No records of biological control agents are reported for this weed, although there is a potential in this field (Rassoul et al. 1988). All Eriophyoidae mites are phytophagous, many of them can reach pests status on crops, whereas many others are associated with weeds. Eriophyoid mites have high potential as classical biological control agents of weeds due to their strict host plant specificity (Lindquist et al. 1996, Smith et al. 2010). According to the world catalogue (Amrine & Stasny 1994), Fauna Europaea (De Lillo 2004) and published records (Denizhan et al. 2007, Xue et al. 2012, Lotfollahi et al. 2014), six eriophyoid mites have been reported on Hedysareae hosts. These include, on Hedysareae type hosts, Aculus hedysari (Liro 1941) from Hedysarum sibiricum Ledeb. (junior synonym of Hedysarum alpinum L.); Aculus longifilis (Canestrini 1891) from Onobrychis viciifolia Scop.; Aceria novellae from Hedysarum sp. (Denizhan et al. 2007) and Aculodes alhagis Xue, Sadeghi & Hong from A. maurorum (Xue et al. 2012).The final two species, Aceria medicaginis (Keifer 1941) and Aculops allotrichus (Nalepa 1894) were recorded on Hedysarum coronarium L. and A. maurorum respectively as alternate hosts. Besides these six species one more was recorded as nomen nudum, i.e. Aceria alhagi from A. maurorum (Kamali 2011, Doryanizadeh et al. 2013). Reliable identification is one of the key elements in the search for biological control agents of pests, including target weeds, in order to avoid unfavourable non-target effects. Phenotypic differences among eriophyoid mites belonging to the same genus associated with the closely related host plants are usually small. Intraspecific variability of morphological traits and the existence of cryptic species makes species determination difficult (Amrine et al. 1994, Skoracka et al. 2002, Navia et al. 2006). Recently, molecular analyses are widely accepted and applied as supplementary methods that help to avoid errors in systematics in such situations (Navajas & Navia 2010). The current study presents the morphological description of a new eriophyoid mite species, A. alhagi n. sp., found on A. maurorum as well as mt-COI nucleotide sequences of populations from different geographical areas. Materials and methods Plant samples of Alhagi maurorum Medik. (Leguminosae) were collected from Iran, Uzbek- istan, Turkey and Armenia during 2012, 2013 and 2015 and examined at the laboratory under a dissection stereomicroscope. Since this mite species was recorded first in Iran (Kamali 2011), we decided to use this material as the type material for morphological description and measurements. Mite specimens from samples representing certain populations were used for morphological and molecular analyses and fixed in 75% and 96% ethanol respectively. Morphological analysis Mites were extracted from the plants using a fine pin with the aid of direct examination under a dissection stereomicroscope and/or using extraction methods described by de Lillo (2001) and Monfreda et al. (2007). The mites were mounted in Keifer’s F medium (Amrine & Manson 1996) and then examined using