Morphological and molecular characters of Scutellonema brachyurus (Steiner, 1938) Andrássy, 1958 from South Africa

During a survey on plant-parasitic nematodes from South Africa, Scutellonema brachyurus was recovered from soil samples collected around the rhizosphere of wild grass in the North West and Limpopo provinces. This species characterized by a hemispherical lip region with four to six annuli, basal lip’s annuli with longitudinal incisures, body length 696–904 µm (a = 25.1–33.5; b = 5.0–7.2; c = 48.9–75.3; c’ = 0.5–0.9; V = 55–60), stylet 21–27 µm length, tail rounded with 10–19 µm length and spermatheca nonfunctional and male absent. The nblast analysis based on the D2-D3 segment of 28 S rDNA placed South African populations of S. brachyurus with 98% similarity to Greece (KU059494) and 99% similarity to South African (JX472052) S. brachyurus. Besides, nblast of COI of mtDNA showed 98% similarity of the test species with South African populations of S. brachyurus (JX472096; JX472097). The phylogenetic analysis put the South African populations of S. brachyurus together with other S. brachyurus with a 100 posterior probability support. Besides, the measurements, line illustration, and scanning electron microscopy photographs are provided for S. brachyurus from South Africa.