First record of pseudoscorpions in the Eastern honey bee colonies in China

Abstract

Pseudoscorpions, considered to be beneficial to human beings, are a class of tiny predatory arachnids. They have been reported to be associated with honey bees and were regarded as a potential biocontrol agent against Varroa destructor mites, the most severe biotic threat to apiculture. Here, we found three pseudoscorpions in Apis cerana colonies in Southeast China. The appearance and the sizes of each body part of the samples were recorded. After sequencing the cox1 gene fragment in the mtDNA, the collected pseudoscorpions were assigned to the genus Ellingsenius. Furthermore, phylogenetic analyses indicated that our samples might be a new pseudoscorpion species. To our knowledge, this is the first report of pseudoscorpions in Apis cerana colonies in China, providing new evidence for the symbiosis of native honey bees and their inhabitants.

Keywords:

• pseudoscorpions
• Ellingsenius
• Eastern honey bee
• Apis cerana cerana
• symbiosis

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Mr. Wenwu Zha for providing the information of the finding of pseudoscorpions in honey bee colonies.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplementary material is available for this article at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2019.1673577

Additional information

Funding

Financial support was granted by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31902220), the Modern Agroindustry Technology Research System (CARS-45-SYZ6) and the Postdoctoral Research Foundation of China (2019M651983).