Description of Mesocriconema ericaceum n. sp. (Nematoda: Criconematidae) and notes on other nematode species discovered in an ericaceous heath bald community in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, USA

Abstract

A new species of Mesocriconema and a unique assemblage of plant-parasitic nematodes was discovered in a heath bald atop Brushy Mountain in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Mesocriconema ericaceum n. sp., a species with males, superficially resembles M. xenoplax. DNA barcoding with the mitochondrial COI gene provided evidence of the new species as a distinct lineage. SEM revealed significant variability in arrangement of labial submedian lobes, plates, and anterior and posterior annuli. Three other nematodes in the family Criconematidae were characterised from the heath bald. Ogma seymouri, when analysed by statistical parsimony, established connections with isolates from north-eastern Atlantic coastal and north-western Pacific coastal wet forests. Criconema loofi has a southern Gulf Coast distribution associated with boggy soils. Criconema cf. acriculum is known from northern coastal forests of California. Understanding linkages between these species and their distribution may lead to the broader development of a terrestrial soil nematode biogeography.

Species Delimitation and Description of Mesocriconema nebraskense n. sp. (Nematoda: Criconematidae), a Morphologically Cryptic, Parthenogenetic Species from North American Grasslands

“…Haplotype groups have been boxed and given a group number. Haplotype groups that correspond to Linnaean names are identified based on analyses in Powers et al (2014Powers et al ( , 2016. M. nebraskense n. sp.…”

Description of Discocriconemella sinensis n. sp. (Nematoda: Criconematidae) from the rhizosphere of Camellia sinensis in China

“…The newly obtained sequences for each gene were aligned using ClustalX 1.83 with default parameters with corresponding published gene sequences of criconematids and related genera (Subbotin et al, 2005(Subbotin et al, , 2006Powers et al, 2010Powers et al, , 2014Powers et al, , 2016aVan den Berg et al, 2012;Maria et al, 2018a). Outgroup taxa for each dataset were chosen according to the results of previously published data (Subbotin et al, 2005(Subbotin et al, , 2006.…”

Description and molecular phylogeny of Mesocriconema abolafiai n. sp. (Nematoda: Criconematidae) from Iran

“…The genus Mesocriconema has a large number of species, which are morphologically very close to each other. Powers et al (2016) distinguished 24 COI haplotype groups; only five of them corresponded to morphologically characterized species. The authors further noticed that it is not unexpected that additional sampling of Mesocriconema will continue to reveal cryptic species within Linnaean morphospecies; as these species have been described in the recent works (Powers et al, 2016;Olson et al, 2017).…”