Three New Mite Species Discovered in China
Posted on June 22, 2015
Three new species of mites have been discovered in China. Dr. Ji Wei Li and his team collected mites from four different areas across Xinjiang, China. They found three new mite species after studying the samples. A drawing of one of the new species, Rhyncaphytoptus fuyuniensis, is pictured.
The other two new species are named Paracolomerus gonglius and Phyllocoptruta beggerianae. These eriophyoid mites are so small they cannot be seen by the naked eye. Some eriophyoid mites can cause damaged to plants by inducing malformations such as galls. However, these three newly discovered species not cause any apparent damages to their host plants.
The mites were found to infest the undersurface of the leaves of two species of flowering plants (Rosa beggeriana and Cotoneaster ignavus). However, no damage to these plants was noted. The mite specimens are being kept at the Department of Plant Protection at Shihezi University in China.
A research paper on the new mite species can be found here in the journal, ZooKeys.
