Aceria ciansensis ( Cotte 1924 )

Monfreda, Rosita & Lillo, Enrico De, 2012, Eriophyoid mites (Acari: Eriophyoidea) on Brassicaceae: a new species of Metaculus from Turkey and remarks on other species associated with brassicaceous plants, Zootaxa 3154, pp. 47-60 : 55-56

4. Aceria ciansensis ( Cotte 1924) .

Cotte 1924 — Mem. Soc. Linn. Provence, 3: 6 (no fig.).

Type data. Alyssum ligusticum Breist. (Cotte indicated A. halimifolium L., but the author of A. halimifolium was not Linnaeus), madwort; Le Cians, Alpes Maritimes, France.

General distribution. Palaearctic (only France).

Relation to the host. Causing distorted leaves that are twisted, more or less atrophied.

Remarks. This species was briefly described by Cotte (1924) who established it as a variety of A. drabae . Later, Nalepa (1929) associated this mite with flower deformation. Amrine and Stasny (1994) elevated this name to the rank of species and treated it as a distinct species such as reported in the Fauna Europaea checklist (de Lillo 2004).

5. Aceria drabae (Nalepa 1890) .

Nalepa 1890b— Sitzb. kaiser. Akad. Wiss. Math.-Naturwiss., Wien, 99(2): 58–59, 65, pl. 5 figs 1–2; Nalepa 1891 — Nova Acta Leop. Akad., 55(6): 368; Roivainen 1950 — Acta Entomol. Fenn., 7: fig. 1 (symptoms); Liro & Roivainen 1951 — Anim. Fenn., 6: 97–98, fig. 52.2; Natcheff 1982 — Plant Sci., 19(6): 130, figs. 12 (schematic drawings) & 13 (symptoms); Petanović 1996 — Zastita bilja, 47(4), 218: S1.3 (coloured photo of deformation); Redfern et al. 2002 —Field studies, 10: fig. 151 (symptoms).

Type data. Cardaria draba (L.) Desv. (= Lepidium draba L. as reported by Nalepa 1890b), hoary cress, whitetop, peppergrass; Wiener-Neustadt, Austria. Further recorded hosts include: Alyssum alyssoides (L.) L. (previously listed as A. calycinum L.), A. montanum L., A. tortuosum Willd. , Arabis hirsuta (L.) Scop., Barbarea vulgaris R.Br. , Berteroa incana (L.) DC., Camelina microcarpa Andrz. ex DC., C. sativa (L.) Crantz, Capsella bursa-pastoris (L.) Medik., C. rubella Reut. , Cardamine bellidifolia L., C. hirsuta L., Cardaminopsis arenosa (L.) Hayek (previously listed as Arabis arenosa (L.) Scop.), Daucus carota L. (Umbelliferae), Descurainia sophia (L.) Webb ex Prantl (previously listed as Sisymbrium sophia L.), Draba glabella Pursh (previously listed as D. hirta ), D. incana L., Erophila verna (L.) Chevall. ( Draba verna L.), Erysimum canescens Roth. , E. cheiranthoides L., E. diffusum Ehrh. , E. virgatum Roth. , Lepidium ruderale L., Pritzelago alpina (L.) Kuntze (previously listed as Hutchinsia alpina (L.) R.Br.), Sisymbrium officinale (L.) Scop., S. orientale L., Syrenia cana (Piller & Mitterp.) Neilr.

General distribution. Palaearctic ( Austria; Bosnia Herzegovina; Britain; Bulgaria; Croatia; Czech Republic; Finland; France; Germany; Hungary; Poland; Romania; Russia; Slovenia; Spain; Sweden; Serbia; possibly also other countries).

Relation to the host. This mite species induces deformation of the flower heads which are completely damaged, sterile and unable to produce seeds; unusual hairiness has also been observed.

Remarks. The relevant confusion about this species comes from the fact that very similar symptoms have been recorded on many closely related brassicaceous species and almost all of them have been related to A. drabae , often without any morphological description or careful study of the mite populations involved.

The original description and drawings are in Nalepa’s style ( Nalepa 1890b) and the prodorsal shield pattern is composed of complete median and admedian lines while a submedian line is bifurcated in the posterior part in correspondence with the sc tubercles. In 1891, Nalepa (1891d) included drabae as varieties of Aceria longior (Nalepa) at first and, later, elevated it to species rank, making A. longior and A. capsellae its junior synonyms ( Nalepa 1929). Examining carefully Nalepa’s drawings of A. longior (1891d) , later reproduced by Liro & Roivainen (1951), the prodorsal shield pattern displays an incomplete median line on the rear third and a complete submedian line which ends on the rear shield margin between the admedian line and the sc tubercles.

Again, Nalepa (1911) listed many host plants for A. drabae , noting that there were minor morphological differences among the populations studied on different hosts. However, he did not give further details on this topic and published a prodorsal shield drawing that differed from previous illustrations. Another description was given by Natcheff (1982) on a population collected on E. verna and the drawing of the prodorsal shield was still slightly different. These differences in the prodorsal shield pattern were never related to population variability or to different species entities. Some recent papers ( Skoracka et al. 2007; Skoracka 2008; Skoracka & Dabert 2010) have largely demonstrated that different species can be morphologically very close even though accurate studies can point out the differences that are useful for discriminating them, in addition to molecular and biological investigations. Aceria drabae may be a further case that falls within this condition. This could be supported by the experimental studies carried out by Lipa (1978) which demonstrated that it is highly likely that the species found on C. draba in Poland has been wrongly associated with many brassicaceous species. However, Lipa (1978) did not give a morphological description of that mite either.