First record of a possible predatory collembolan species, Dicyrtoma fusca (Collembola: Dicyrtomidae), in New Zealand

Abstract

Specimens of a previously unrecorded collembolan species were found in a field margin of a commercial dairy farm near Christchurch, New Zealand. They were consistently observed apparently feeding on egg batches of the light brown apple moth Epiphyas postvittana, which were being used as bait to assess predation rate by potential biocontrol agents. The collembolan specimens were identified as the European species Dicyrtoma fusca based on published morphological descriptions of this species. DNA sequence data of the New Zealand specimens clustered with sequence data from GenBank of this species from Norway and England, confirming that D. fusca populations in New Zealand originated from Europe. A GenBank sequence had previously identified a collembolan species from Estonia as this species, but its position in the phylogeny indicates that it is a different species. Some morphological variations observed in arrangement of macrochaetae on the head were shown by sequence data to be intraspecific differences only.