A new feather mite species of the genus Trouessartia Canestrini, 1899 (Acarina, Trouessartiidae) - an integrative description (morphology and DNA barcoding data).

Ioana Cristina Constantinescu,Luis Ovidiu Popa,Oana Paula Popa,Ioana Cobzaru,Mukhim D Khlur B,Costică Adam

doi:10.3897/zookeys.789.27829

Abstract

A new species of the feather mite genus Trouessartia (Trouessartiidae) is described from the Large NiltavaNiltavagrandis (Blyth) (Passeriformes, Muscicapidae) in Northeast India (Meghalaya, Jaintia Hills, Shnongrim village). Trouessartianiltavae Constantinescu, sp. n. is morphologically closely related (no phylogenetic meaning) to T.bulligera Gaud, 1968 from Clytorhynchushamlini (Mayr) (Passeriformes: Monarchidae), sharing in males a unique character within the genus, by having setae e on legs IV hemispheroid, with spine-shaped apex. Males of the new species have the prodorsal shield without ornamentation, the prohysteronotal shield and lobar shield connected, and the terminal cleft parallel sided. Females have the posterior half of the hysteronotal shield ornamented with large ovate lacunae in central area and small elliptical lacunae marginally. To the morphological description of this new feather mite species we added sequence data on the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene fragment (COI). The phylogenetic relationships between Trouessartia species are briefly discussed.

Highlights

The feather mite genus Trouessartia Canestrini, 1899 comprises about 120 described species associated predominantly with birds of the order Passeriformes
A number of undetermined Trouessartia species were reported from the following areas of the world: 22 species from Colombia (Barreto et al 2012), 15 species from Brazil (Silva et al 2015) and 162 species from Southeast Asia (McClure and Ratanaworabhan 1973)
The bird genus Niltava Hodgson belongs to the family of Old World Flycatchers (Passeriformes: Muscicapidae) and currently includes six valid species distributed in the Indo-Malayan biogeographic region (Clements et al 2016)

Summary

Introduction

The feather mite genus Trouessartia Canestrini, 1899 comprises about 120 described species associated predominantly with birds of the order Passeriformes. Feather mites were previously recorded only on two of these species: Analges sp., Anisodiscus sp., Mesalgoides sp., Proctophyllodes cotyledon Trouessart, 1899, Bicentralges distinctus Orwig, 1968, Proterothrix chachulae Constantinescu, 2017 and Trouessartia sp. The main goals of this paper are to realise the description of a new species of Trouessartia and to analyse its relationships within the genus based on molecular data. This is the first species of Trouessartia described from a host of the genus Niltava, as mentioned above, two presumably new species of Trouessartia have been reported by Atyeo (McClure and Ratanaworabhan 1973) from N. grandis and N. sundara, but they have never been described

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