Euseius ovaloides (Blommers)

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 : 255

Euseius ovaloides (Blommers)

Amblyseius (Amblyseius) ovaloides Blommers 1974: 147 .

Euseius ovaloides, Moraes et al. 1986: 51, 2004b: 78 , Chant & McMurtry 2005b: 215, 2007:

121.

Euseius ovaloides was described by Blommers (1974) from specimens collected on Citrus hystrix de Candolle (Rutaceae) and Persea americana Miller (Lauraceae) in Madagascar. Like all Euseius species , this species belongs to the type IV (pollenophagous generalist predators) of McMurtry and Croft (1997) and McMurtry et al. (2013). The species had been occasionally recorded from Madagascar ( Blommers 1974), Papua­New Guinea ( Schicha and Gutierrez 1985), Seychelles ( Schicha 1987), La Réunion Island, ( Quilici et al. 1997, 2000, Kreiter et al. 2020c), Guadeloupe, Martinique and Marie­Galante ( Moraes et al. 2000 ; Kreiter et al. 2006)

on various plants, though its biology remains unknown. It is suspected to be a poor predator of tetranychid mites ( Gutierrez and Etienne 1986) but can be considered as a potential predator of thrips and whiteflies. This is one of the most common species on La Réunion Island ( Kreiter et al. 2020c).

World distribution: Guadeloupe Island, Madagascar Island, Marie­Galante Island, Martinique Island, Mauritius Island, Mayotte Island, Papua New Guinea, Réunion Island, Rodrigues Island, Seychelles Archipelago, Vietnam.

Specimens examined: a single specimen (1 ♀ and 1 ♂) collected during this study. Djoumoichongo (230 m aasl, lat. 11°48 ′ 34 ″ S, long. 43°17 ′ 37 ″ E), 1 ♀ and 1 ♂ on Persea americana Miller (Lauraceae) , 10/XII/2018.

Remarks: this species was recently reported from Rodrigues and Mauritius Islands (Kreiter and Abo­Shnaf 2020a, b), from Mayotte Island (Kreiter et al. 2020a) and from Vietnam (Kreiter et al. 2020b). Morphological and morphometric characters and all measurements of our specimens fit well with measurements in Kreiter et al. (2020d). This species was the second most collected species in our study comparing with A. herbicolus on Mauritius ( Kreiter

& Abo­Shnaf 2020b) and it was also very common in La Réunion ( Kreiter et al. 2020c) but less common in Mayotte and Grande Comore Islands.