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KEYS TO SPECIES OF PHYTOSEIIDAE MITES IN EUROPEAN VINE FIELDS

Marie-Stephane Tixier, Andrea Baldassar, Carlo Duso and Serge Kreiter

Species considered

Only the valid species, according to the last world catalogue of the family Phytoseiidae (Moraes et al. 2004) were considered. Thanks to the up-dated data used by Tixier et al. (2008, 2012) constructed thanks to Moraes et al. (1986) and then up-dated, the species reported on Vitis vinifera L. in European countries have been retrieved. Two species, not included in Moraes et al. (2004), were added: Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) yasminae Faraji, (Faraji et al. 2008) and Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) atoosae Faraji (Faraji et al. 2011). A total of 54 species (belonging to 15 genera and three sub-families) reported in 12 countries have been considered, representing 240 reports (see Table below). For the practical purposes of this work, Israel, Turkey and Iran have been considered as European countries as actually present and fairly well established businesses in the landscape of wine production belt located between 30 ° and 50 ° North parallel.

Characters considered

Setae nomenclature used in the key follows Lindquist and Evans (1965) as adapted by Rowell et al. (1978) for the Phytoseiidae, with modifications for the caudal region as given by Lindquist (1994). Idiosomal solenostome nomenclature follows Athias-Henriot (1975).
For species present in the Montpellier SupAgro collections, observations were performed with a phase and differential interference contrasts microscope (Leica DMLB, Leica Microsystèmes SAS, Nanterre, France) (40x magnification). For species wich were not present in our collection, type specimens were borrowed and observed. The types of the 6 following species have been borrowed: Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) cryptus (Oudemans), Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) psyllakisi (Swirskii & Ragusa), T. (A.) atoosae (Faraji), T. (A.) yasminae (Faraji), Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) athenas (Swirskii & Ragusa), Typhlodromus (Typhlodromus) corticis (Herbert).
Pictures were taken to illustrate the keys.

Two keys are available

A DICHOTOMOUS KEY: The dichotomous key provides a logical path to choose between two propositions per item. The first step is the distinction between the three sub-families of Phytoseiidae: Amblyseiinae, Typhlodrominae and Phytoseiinae. Then for each sub-family, a key to the genera and then to the species is proposed. For some genera, a single species of Phytoseiidae has been reported in European vineyards. In these cases, a notice will explain that this is the only species of that genus in the electronic key. For several species, pictures of dorsal shield, ventral shields, spermatheca and chelicerae dentition (when visible) are provided. For a better understanding of some morphological features used in the key, pictures or drawings were added.

A POLYTOMOUS KEY: The polytomous key allows the user to select from characters which are more easily recognized, in any desired order. Each character is illustrated to help the user. Pictures of several species are also available.

When using this latter key, the group of species selected with the state of characters chosen also included the species for which the state of characters is not known.

List of species of phytoseiid mites in the keys