WANA (Nov 24) – A new arthropod species has been discovered and named in honor of Mohsen Pouyan, a distinguished researcher in medicinal plants from South Khorasan, Iran, according to Dr. Javad Noei, a faculty member at Birjand University.

 

Dr. Noei revealed that the species, belonging to the genus Caeculisoma and classified under the subclass of mites, was identified during a doctoral thesis project conducted at the University of Zabol.

 

The species has been officially registered as Caeculisoma pouyani Noei & Kohansal, 2024, in recognition of Pouyan’s contributions as the director of the Medicinal Plants Research Complex at South Khorasan’s Academic Jihad.

 

“This genus has not been previously reported in Iran,” Dr. Noei noted, emphasizing the significance of the discovery. The species was collected from agricultural pest hosts in the Chekhandan and Zohan regions of South Khorasan Province, where it was identified and described as an external parasite of these pests.

 

The research was supervised jointly by Dr. Sara Ramroodi from the University of Zabol and Dr. Javad Noei from Birjand University, with additional consultation by Dr. Ehsan Rakhshani from the University of Zabol.

 

Dr. Noei also highlighted another species named Caeculisoma brazilensis Noei & Šundić, 2024, collected and described from Brazil’s cave ecosystems. This species was named after its place of discovery.

 

Both species play a vital role as natural enemies of agricultural pests. The findings have been published as two scientific articles in prestigious journals, Systematic and Applied Acarology and Acarologia, based in France and Australia, respectively.