Tarsonemus longitibialis (Attiah)

Lofego, Antonio Carlos, Cavalcante, Ana Cristina Cerqueira, Demite, Peterson Rodrigo, Rezende, José Marcos, Ochoa, Ronald & Moraes, Gilberto José De, 2019, Reinstatement of Metatarsonemus Attiah (Acari: Tarsonemidae), with description of a new species, redefinition of the genus and a key to the world species, Zootaxa 4711 (2), pp. 307-329 : 323

Tarsonemus longitibialis (Attiah)

Metatarsonemus longitibialis Attiah, 1970: 190 .

Tarsonemus longitibialis, Lindquist, 1985:1285 ; Lin and Zhang, 2002: 246.

Remarks: Examining the specimens available to Attiah, in the same slide preparation of the holotype male, Lindquist (1985) detected two adult females that apparently belonged to this species and that were in poor condition. He distinguished them from females of M. simplicissimus by three characteristics, one of which was the absence of fissures in coxisternal plates I to IV. This character state leads us to exclude T. longitibialis from Metatarsonemus, as re-defined here. An examination of the females is necessary before a conclusion about which genus T. longitibialis belongs, but is provisionally retained in Tarsonemus . We tried to analyze these females by examining the same slide studied by Lindquist (1985) which supposedly would contain the females (in poor conditions according to Lindquist) and males of T. longitibialis . But only males were found. Though we carefully looked for them, no females were evident. Possibly they were crystallized by the medium or lost during some remounting procedure. Therefore, a definitive conclusion in this regard requires an examination of additional specimens collected from the type locality.