NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THE MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS OF SOME SPECIES OF AQUATIC MITES IN EGYPT

The aim of this study was to determine the taxonomic position of some species of water mites, and explore the difference between the numerical taxonomy and the traditional morphological taxonomy for water mites. Based on hierarchical clustering analysis and principal component analysis (PCA), the numerical taxonomy of 17 species of water mites was carried out. These analyses were applied for 309 morphological characters of the present species. The results of the clustering analysis based on squared Euclidean distance showed that the 17 species of the water mites were divided into 10 Families in the cladogram namely Hydrozetidae, Malaconothridae, Unionicolidae, Tenuipalpidae, Tuckerellidae, Tetranychidae, Cheyletidae, Laelaptidae, Ascidae, and Dermanyssidae. The separation of these species depended on the highly-significant characters, which have high factor loading more than 1.0. The percentages of non-significant variations in the morphological characters were 51.90%, 18.45%, and 10.02% for two groups of water mite taxa with total variation equals 80.37%. In conclusion, the numerical analysis can confirm the traditional morphological taxonomy by using different analyses such as the cladistic analysis and PCA.