Pronematus ubiquitus ( McGregor 1932 )

Pronematus ubiquitus ( McGregor 1932)

Material examined — 1 ♀ (Ünye, N41°4′11.40″ E37°13′35.34″, 281 m, 18. VII.2018)

Remarks — Pronematus ubiquitus was originally reported as Tydeus ubiquitus in Lindsay, California from foliage of citrus trees ( McGregor 1932). This species is distributed across all continents except for Antarctica. It was found in North America ( Acuna-Soto et al. 2017),

South America ( Sousa et al. 2015), Europe ( Vela et al. 2017), Africa ( Ueckermann and

Grout 2007), Asia (Baradaran and Arabi 2009), and Oceania ( Maynard et al. 2018). The following locations in Türkiye have reported the presence of this species on various plants:

tomato in İzmir ( Yaşarakıncı and Hıncal 1997); vineyards in İzmir, Manisa, and Denizli ( Göven et al. 2009); eggplant, melon, and zucchini in Antalya ( Can and Çobanoğlu 2010); tomato in Ankara ( Çobanoğlu and Kumral 2014) and Bursa ( Çobanoğlu and Kumral 2014 ; Aysan and Kumral 2018), Solanum dulcamara L. ( Solanaceae ) in Ankara, S. nigrum in Ankara and Bursa ( Kumral and Çobanoğlu 2015); pear ( Akyol and Akyazı 2022); and P. laurocerasus ( Akyazı et al. 2022b) in Ordu. This mite is a predator species that feeds on small prey such as eriophyid and tetranychid mites, as well as plant-based food sources like plant sap, pollen, and fungi ( Pijnakker et al. 2022a, b). In addition, it was noted that P. ubiquitus is an effective solution to combat two main problems in tomato crops: Aculops lycopersici (Massee) (Tormbidiformes: Eriophyidae ) and powdery mildew Oidium (neolycopersici L. Kiss). It is possible to pre-establish and build up large populations of this mite by supplementing tomato plants with pollen ( Duarte et al. 2021 ; Pijnakker et al. 2022b; Moerkens et al. 2023). Because of its importance as potential bio-control agent of Aculops lycopersici but with morphological variability between specimens of different origins and type material, which is in a bad state, Ueckermann et al. (2024) undertook a thorough revision of this species based on material from the type locality compared with populations of other regions.