Pterygosoma patagonica Dittmar

Fajfer, Monika & Acuña, Daniel González, 2013, Pterygosomatid mites of a new species group ligare (Acariformes: Pterygosomatidae: Pterygosoma) parasitizing tree iguanas (Squamata: Liolaemidae: Liolaemus), Zootaxa 3693 (3), pp. 301-319 : 316

Pterygosoma patagonica Dittmar de la Cruz, Morando and Avila 2004

Pterygosoma patagonica Dittmar de la Cruz, Morando and Avila 2004: 1, figs. 1–5.

This species was insufficiently described from six species of Liolaemus spp . from various provinces of Argentina (Dittmar de la Cruz et al. 2004). The type series (syntypes) includes five males (!all are designated as holotypes) and 5 females without providing data about their exact localities (only provinces and host species were listed separately). These specimens were deposited at the Insect Genomics Lab, at Brigham Young University but are lost now (Dittmar de la Cruz, personal communication). The figures provided in the original description of P. patagonica do not allow to differ it clearly from other species of the ligare group while they contain enough details to determine this species as a member of this group. In addition, the documentation provided by Dittmar de la Cruz et al. (2004) makes impossible to associate this species with determine host or locality. As the present work demonstrates, three liolaemids are associated with several Pterygosoma spp . (more than one mite species could be recorded from a particular host) and new records from the Argentinian hosts would not be referred to P. patagonica based solely on the original description of this species. For these reasons, we propose to consider this species as nomen dubium and hope that the type series of this species would be finally found.