Torrenticola meridionalis Di Sabatino & Cicolani, 1990

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 : 26-28

Torrenticola meridionalis Di Sabatino & Cicolani, 1990

Torrenticola meridionalis is a rhitrobiontic species, originally described from Italy ( Di Sabatino and Cicolani 1990) and subsequently reported from different parts of the Balkans (see Pešić et al. 2010, 2018). During our 2019 survey in the Ohrid Lake region in North Macedonia we collected and successfully barcoded two specimens from the ancient Prespa Lake that matches the description of T. meridionalis . The finding of this species in the littoral zone of Prespa Lake is very interesting because this habitat is unusual for torrenticolid mites.

The analysis involved 17 nucleotide sequences and the final data set comprised 669 nucleotide positions for 15 specimens of T. meridionalis , one specimen of T. elliptica (as most closely related species) and T. laskai (as a distant outgroup). The neighbour-joining (NJ) tree is presented in Fig. 2 .

We delineated three T. meridionalis haplogroups. The sequences from Italy forms a well-supported haplogroup (TorrM-II) recovered in the COI tree as a sister clade of haplogrup (TorrM-III) which includes specimens from Montenegro. Both haplogroups possesses a low intraspecific distance ( Table 4 ). The average K2P genetic distance between these two haplogrups was estimated to be 6.3±1.1% K 2P. Our sequences from Prespa Lake belong to a strongly-supported haplogroup (TorrM-III) which includes also sequences from Montenegro. In the COI tree, the later clade was recovered as a sister clade to other T. meridionalis haplogroups and a high interspecific distance which ranged from 6.7 to 7.2% K2P ( Table 5 ).

The taxonomic status of these lineages across the whole distribution of this probable species complex needs to be investigated by morphometric data and additional molecular markers.

Figures

Figure 2. Neighbour-joining tree based on studied Torrenticola meridionalis COI sequences.