Torrenticola baueri Bader & Sepasgozarian, 1987

Torrenticola barsica — Asadi et al. 2010: 45

Material examined — Iran, Golestan Province, Shirabad near Khanbebin, stream, downstream near bridge, gravel, 36.967499 N, 55.027779 E, 27.viii.2017 leg. Pešić, Zawal & Saboori, 3♂ (1♂ sequenced [DCDDJ067-21], dissected and slide mounted [CCDB 38361 F07]) .

Remarks— Torrenticola baueri was described by Bader & Sepasgozarian (1987) from a stream in Elburs mountain of North Iran. The authors compared T. baueri with the morphologically distant T. anomala, but were not aware of the close similarity to T. barsica . Laster on, Asadi et al. (2010) re-examined the holotype of T. baueri and found that this species matches the morphology and measurement ranges of Torrenticola barsica (Szalay, 1933), a species widely distributed in the Western Palaearctic. The only difference was found in a slightly shorter medial suture Cx-II+III in male (97 µm in T. baueri vs. 105-110 µm in T. barsica). As a result the latter authors synonymized T. baueri with T. barsica .

During our 2017 survey in Northern Iran we collected several specimens of barsica -like mites which morphologically match the original description of T. baueri and measurements given by Asadi et al. (2010). One specimen [CCDB 38361 F07] was successfully barcoded and used for species delimitation.

For the final alignment of species delimitation using COI sequence data we used the 34 Torrenticola specimens listed in Table 7 and one outgroup, Monatractides persicus Pešić, 2004 to root the tree. The neighbor-joining (NJ) tree is presented in Fig. 7. The COI sequence retrieved from the Torrenticola baueri specimen collected in Iran was recovered as sister to T. barsica (Fig. 7). The average K2P genetic distance between the COI sequence of the specimen of T. baueri from Iran and two specimens of T. barsica from Montenegro was 17.4% suggesting a long independent history of these two species. Therefore, we resurrected T. baueri as a valid species distinct from T. barsica .

Distribution— Iran.