Monatractides persicus Pešić, 2004

Pešić, Vladimir, Zawal, Andrzej, Saboori, Alireza & Smit, Harry, 2021, New records of water mites (Acari, Hydrachnidia) from Iran with the description of one new species based on morphology and DNA barcodes, Zootaxa 5082 (5), pp. 425-440 : 434-435

Monatractides persicus Pešić, 2004

Monatractides stadleri — Asadi et al. 2010: 46

Material examined — Iran, Mazandaran Province, IR13 area of Ramsar city , Elburs Mountain , small waterfall, 36.8897 N, 50.5681 E, 29.viii.2017 leg. Pešić, Zawal & Saboori, 2♀ (sequenced [ CCDB38233 F07, -F08]) .

Remarks— Monatractides persicus Pešić, 2004 was described from a stream in Elburs mountain of North Iran ( Pešić & Saboori 2004). Later on, this species was placed in synonymy with M. stadleri (Walter, 1924) by Asadi et al. (2010). The latter authors felt that some differences such as the presence of knob-shaped protrusions at the margin of the gnathosomal bay are not suitable for separating the two species.

The specimen from Northern Iran used in this study for molecular analysis perfectly matches the description of M. persicus . The latter species can be distinguished from M. stadleri on the basis of a relatively thicker chelicera (ratio L/H 5.6–5.9 vs. 6.2–6.4, data taken from Pešić & Saboori 2004). Based on our COI tree, Monatractides persicus is a sister taxon of M. stadleri (see Fig. 6 ). The average K2P genetic distance between M. persicus and M. stadleri was estimated to 9.35%. Thus, the morphological and molecular data suggest that M. persicus is a valid species distinct from M. stadleri .

Distribution— Iran.

Figures

FIGURE 6. Neighbor-joining tree based on studied Monatractides COI sequences. The optimal tree with the sum of branch length = 0.33301736 is shown. The analysis involved 9 nucleotide sequences. There were a total of 669 positions in the final dataset.