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Dispersal and colonisation determine the survival and success of organisms, and influence the structure and dynamics of communities and ecosystems in space and time. Both affect the gene flow between populations, ensuring sufficient level of genetic variation and improving adaptation abilities. In haplodiploids, such as Aceria tosichella (wheat curl mite, WCM), a population may be founded even by a single unfertilised female, so there is a risk of heterozygosity loss (i.e. founder effect). It may lead to adverse outcomes, such as inbreeding depression. Yet, the strength of the founder effect partly depends on the genetic variation of the parental population. WCM is an economically important pest with a great invasive potential, but its dispersal and colonisation mechanisms were poorly studied before. Therefore, here we assessed WCM dispersal and colonisation potential in relation to the genetic variation of the parental population. We checked whether this potential may be linked to specific pre-dispersal actions (e.g. mating before dispersal and collective behaviour). Our study confirms that dispersal strategies of WCM are not dependent on heterozygosity in the parental population, and the efficient dispersal of this species depends on collective movement of fertilised females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eriophyoid mites (Eriophyoidea) are minute phytophagous mites with great economic importance and great invasive potential. In spite of their demonstrated impact on ecosystem functions, knowledge of eriophyoid mite fauna in the Arctic is lacking. To date, only eight eriophyoid mite species have been recorded from the entire region north of the Arctic Circle. The Svalbard archipelago is one of the most biologically investigated Arctic areas. Despite the fact that studies on invertebrates on Svalbard have been conducted for more than one hundred years, eriophyoids have never been recorded before from this place, except for one likely accidental record of a single specimen belonging to the genus Eriophyes. Thus, each new study of eriophyoid mite fauna in this region is important. In this paper, a new species of eriophyoid mite, Cecidophyes siedleckii n. sp., is described and illustrated. Nucleotide sequence data (D2 region of 28S rDNA) were employed to complement traditional morphological taxonomy. The first record of Aceria saxifragae (Rostrup 1900) from Svalbard is also provided, with supplementary morphological descriptions and illustrations. Eriophyoid mites represent an important and underutilized taxon that is available to ecologists studying the effects of changing climatic conditions on Svalbard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]