مشخصات پژوهش

Ziziphus jujuba Mill., locally known as Konar, is a shrub, sometimes growing as a tall tree, belonging to the family Rhamnaceae, and native to the warm temperate and subtropical regions including Iran. It has very nutritious fruits that are usually eaten fresh. Its fruits and leaves are used in the folklore medicine for the treatment of digestive disorders, weakness, liver complaints, urinary troubles, diabetes, fever, anemia, sores and skin diseases. Until now, about 38 eriophyoid species have been collected and described from the plants of family Rhamnaceae and 11 of them have been found on Ziziphus plants. A sampling was carried out on Z. jujuba during mid-May 2016 in Jiroft region of Kerman province, Iran. Their eriophyoid mites were recovered from the leaves by means of the modified washing method and were slide mounted according to Baker et al. (1996). All morphological measurements were taken by means of a phase contrast microscope Olympus BX53 according to Amrine and Manson (1996) as modified by de Lillo et al. (2010). The specimens were identified as Aculops sp. nov. and is here described and illustrated. This is a first record of Aculops mites collected on a Rhamnaceae plant. It shows few similarities with Aculops privae Mohanasundaram, 1980 collected from Priva leptostachya Juss. (Verbenaceae) in India. But these two species distinctly differ in some details of prodorsal shield pattern (especially presence of four transverse lines between second submedian and lateral lines that are absent in the new species), number of the empodial rays (5 in A. privae and 6 in the new species), dorsal and ventral semiannuli number (42 and 70 in A. privae versus 25–32 and 59–64 in the new species), dorsal semiannuli ornamentation (smooth in A. privae and with very faint elongated microtubercles in the new species) and length of setae sc (12 in A. privae and 28–30 in the new species), d (70 in A. privae and 44–58 in the new species), e (20 in A. privae and 13–15 in the new