Two new species of chigger mites (Trombidiformes: Trombiculidae: Blankaartia and Euschoengastia) associated with rodents from the Amargosa Valley, Mojave Desert, United States, with the redescription of Euschoengastia fasolla Brennan and Beck, 1955

ABSTRACT

In the present study, we described two new species, Euschoengastia mojavensis sp. n. and Blankaartia auris sp. n. collected from rodents in the Amargosa River valley near Tecopa, in Inyo County, California, USA. We also redescribe the most similar Euschoengastia species when compared with the new species, Euschoengastia fasolla Brennan and Beck, 1955, from Berry Springs Nature Reserve, Utah, USA.

KEYWORDS:

• Chiggers
• ectoparasites
• USA
• North America
• taxonomy

Acknowledgments

To Gabrielle Ribeiro de Andrade, Maria Cristina Ferreira do Rosário from the Laboratório de Coleções Zoológicas, Instituto Butantan, for technical contribution; Valeria Castilho Onofrio, for giving access to Acarological Collection of the Instituto Butantan; Andrew Ulsamer from the Systematic Entomology Laboratory, USDA for technical contribution; Hans Klompen, for helping us depositing the type material at the OSAL collection; The Smithsonian Natural History Museum and National Agricultural Library (NAL-USDA), SEL-USDA for support and assistance with specimens and references. Mention of trade names or commercial products in this publication is solely for purpose of providing specific information and does not imply recommendation or endorsement by the USDA; USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico under the Grant CNPq no. 402575/2021-0 (FCJ) and the Productivity Grant of DMB-B (CNPq Process #303802/2021-9); by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo under the Grant FAPESP no. 2017/01416-7 (RB-S), 2018/24667-8 (RB-S), 2020/11755-6 (RB-S), and 2019/19853-0 (FCJ). Also, this study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.