Hygrobates trigonicus Koenike, 1895

Pešić, Vladimir, Jovanović, Milica, Manović, Ana, Karaouzas, Ioannis & Smit, Harry, 2021, New records of water mites from the Balkans revealed by DNA barcoding (Acari, Hydrachnidia), Ecologica Montenegrina 49, pp. 20-34 : 31

Hygrobates trigonicus Koenike, 1895

Hygrobates trigonicus is a rhitrobiontic species, known from the Western Palaearctic ( Gerecke et al. 2016). Three specimens from Greece, successfully barcoded in our study, match the description of H. trigonicus . The final alignment for species delimitation using COI sequence data comprised sequences of five specimens morphologically assigned of Hygrobates trigonicus and one outgroup, Hygrobates longipapis to root the tree. The final alignment consisted of 664 nucleotide positions. The neighbour-joining (NJ) tree is presented in Fig. 6 .

We obtained two haplogroups of H. trigonicus : a highly supported clade (HygT-I) containing three sequences from Greece, is placed as the sister clade of two specimens from North Germany (HygT-2); the distance (13.4±1.5% K2P) between these clades are of interspecific level.

Hygrobates trigonicus was originally described by Koenike (1895) from the ditch “Schwarze Teich” (Engl. Black ditch) in Saxony. The sequences from Germany that form the HygT-II clade come from two lakes in North Germany ( Martin et al. 2010). As for the trigonicus population from running waters, one junior synonym, H. properus Láska, 1954 exists for this species. Hygrobates properus was described by Láska (1954) on the basis of a female from the Orava River and its tributaries in Slovakia, but it was later synonymized by Smit et al. (2015). To clarify the taxonomic status of the barcode lineages further specimens from Europe should be barcoded including specimens of the type locality of both taxa.

Figures

Figure 6. Neighbour-joining tree based on studied Hygrobates trigonicus COI sequences.