Phytoseiidae) in India with a redescription of the species

This paper reports for the first time the occurrence of Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) transvaalensis (Nesbitt) in India. Morphometric measurements of the Indian specimens collected on an unidentified plant in Ramanagara district of Karnataka are provided along with a redescription of the species, and a comparison with specimens from Japan, Africa, Argentina and La Réunion Island to show similarities and variations in morphological traits of taxonomic importance.


Introduction
The family Phytoseiidae contains predatory mites used in biological control. It comprises three subfamilies: Amblyseiinae, Phytoseiinae and Typhlodrominae. Within the subfamily Typhlodrominae, the genus Typhlodromus contains the highest number of species, and is divided into two subgenera, Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) De Leon and Typhlodromus (Typhlodromus) Scheuten McMurtry 1994, 2007). There are 388 described species of Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) in the world (Demite et al. 2020).
Since the present report of T. (A.) transvaalensis is the first from India, morphometric measurements of the Indian specimens collected on an unidentified plant in Ramanagara district of Karnataka are provided along with a redescription of the species. In addition, morphological traits of the Indian specimens are compared with those reported in redescriptions provided by Ehara and Kishimoto (2007), Ueckermann et al. (2008), Cédola and Castresana (2014) and Kreiter et al. (2020) for specimens collected in Japan, Africa, Argentina and La Réunion Island, respectively. All measurements are given in micrometres (µm).

Male
Not found, probably because this species is known to reproduce by thelytokous parthenogenesis (Kishimoto 2015).  Table 1 gives a comparison of morphological traits of taxonomic importance for specimens of T. (A.) transvaalensis collected in India, Japan, Africa, Argentina and La Réunion Island.
Although the dorsal setae of Indian specimens are sparsely plumose, they do not look like those of the Argentinian specimens described and illustrated as plumose by Cédola and Castresana (2014). The Indian specimens are similar to the Japanese specimens (Ehara and Kishimoto 2007) in regard to the setae J5, z2 and S5, which have a pointed tip.
In regard to the macrosetae of leg IV, the Indian specimens are comparable to that of the African and La Réunionese specimens. It can be concluded that the differences between Indian and other specimens are very likely to correspond to intraspecific variations. It is worth noting that the Indian specimens are closer to the African specimens than to those from other regions.
Fortyone species of the genus Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) are reported from India (Demite et al. 2020), and T. (A.) transvaalensis is the 42 nd species to be added to that list. Sources of data -Japan: Ehara and Kishimoto (2007)   Typhlodromus (A.) transvaalensis is a type III generalist predator that feeds on mites, insects and pollen (McMurtry et al. 2013). It could complete its life cycle feeding on the eriophyid mites Eriophyes dioscoridis Soliman and AbouAwad and E. olivi Zaher and AbouAwad, eggs of the scale insect Parlatoria ziziphus (Lucas) and pollen of Ricinus communis (L.) under experimental conditions (Momen and Hussein 1999). Cañarte et al. (2017) showed that it has high potential to control Polyphagotarsonemus latus (Banks) in Jatropha curcas L. plantations.
Mass production and utilization of this species are planned for biological control in India (Gupta and Sreerama Kumar 2018).