Typhlodromalus spinosus

Kreiter, Serge, Payet, Rose-My, Mouigni, Hadji, Douin, Martial, Tixier, Marie-Stéphane & Azali, Hamza Abdou, 2021, New records of phytoseiid mites (Acari: Mesostigmata) of Grande Comore Island (Comoros Archipelago), Acarologia 61 (2), pp. 241-273 : 257

Typhlodromalus spinosus (Meyer & Rodrigues)

Amblyseius spinosus Meyer & Rodrigues 1966: 30 , Moraes et al. 1986: 31.

Kampimodromus spinosus, Quilici et al. 2000: 100 .

Typhlodromalus spinosus, Moraes et al. 2004b: 204 , Chant & McMurtry 2005b: 199, 2007:

111.

This species also belongs to the athiasae species group as setae J1 and S5 are absent

( Chant and McMurtry 2005b, Moraes et al. 2006). The rapid multiplication of this species on the western flower thrips (WFT), Frankliniella occidentalis Pergande , was confirmed under laboratory and field conditions, but it was not effective against T. urticae ( Mwangi et al. 2015) .

It seems abundant in low vegetation as it was found in high populations in a study of companion plants in citrus orchards (Le Bellec et al. unpub. data).

World distribution: Anjouan Island, Benin, Burundi Dr Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius Island, Mohéli Island, Mozambique, Réunion Island.

Specimens examined: fiver specimens (5 ♀♀) collected during this study. Ivembeni, Banda Samlini (791 m aasl, lat. 11°29 ′ 22 ″ S, long. 43°19 ′ 36 ″ E), 2 ♀♀ on Rubus rosifolius Smith (Rosaceae) and 3 ♀♀ on Occimum gratissimum L. ( Lamiaceae ), 7/XII/2018.

Remarks: morphological and morphometric characters and all measurements of our specimens fit well with measurements in Kreiter et al. (2020d). This species was described from Mozambique ( Meyer and Rodrigues 1966) and then reported from Indian Ocean from La Réunion Island ( Quilici et al. 2000 ; Kreiter et al. 2020d), Mauritius ( Kreiter and Abo­Shnaf 2020b) and more recently from Anjouan ( Kreiter et al. 2021a) and Mohéli Islands ( Kreiter et al. 2021b) in the Comoros Archipelago.