Protodinychus ainscoughi Huţu & Călugăr, 2002

KazemiK, Shahrooz & K, Hans Klompen, 2022, Description of a new species of Protodinychus (Mesostigmata: Protodinychidae), and a key to deutonymphs of the genus, Acarologia 62 (3), pp. 585-596 : 592-594

Protodinychus ainscoughi Huţu & Călugăr, 2002

Protodinychus ainscoughi Huțu & Călugăr, 2002: 227.

Protodinychus sp. Johnston, 1961: 528 (in part).

Protodinychus johnstoni Hirschmann 1979: 57 , nomen nudum.

( Figures 4F, 5–6)

This species was described based on adults and deutonymphs collected from beaver nests in Ontario, Canada. Prior to this, Johnston (1961) reported on two collections of Protodinychus from Ontario, Canada. He figured a female from one of those collections, and made a comment on a protonymph that may have been part of the same collection (from debris in a beaver lodge). The second collection involved deutonymphs phoretic on beaver nest beetles. Conspecificity of this material with P. ainscoughi was rejected by Huțu and Călugăr (2002) because Johnston (1961) described (not figured) a protonymph as having four dorsal shields, while Huțu & Călugăr note only two shields in their specimens (Huțu and Călugăr 2002). We have not been able to recover any of the material of the first collection studied by Johnston (1961) (adults and nymphs) in the OSAL collection, but did recover six of the deutonymphs from Leptonillus validus , presumably from the second collection. These specimens match the description by Huțu and Călugăr (2002), and are therefore provisionally considered conspecific. The status of the material in the first collection is considered unknown until actual specimens can be recovered.

In a final complication, Hirschmann (1979a) designated Johnston’s specimens as P. johnstoni Hirschmann, 1979 , based exclusively on Johnston’s (1961) drawings of a female.

This is considered nomen a nudum because according to article 13.1.1 of the Code for Zoological Nomenclature (1999) in order for a name to be available, it needs to be accompanied by a description or definition that states in words the characters that differentiate the taxon, and neither Hirschmann or Johnston provided such data.

In the original description of the species, setae j 1 in the deutonymph were listed as inserted on soft cuticle. However, examination of the specimens associated with L. validus indicated these setae are inserted on a lightly sclerotized vertex plate ( Figure 5B). Other additions to the earlier description of the deutonymph include: (1) a pore in the median dorsal region of the gnathotectum; (2) tibia II in this species has only eight setae, including only one pl seta (2, 1/1,

2/1, 1), instead of the nine setae in P. ahangarani n. sp. and P. punctatus (2, 1/1, 2/1, 2) ( Evans 1972).