First record of a possible predatory collembolan species, Dicyrtoma fusca (Collembola: Dicyrtomidae), in New Zealand

Specimens of a previously unrecorded collembolan species were found in a field margin of a commercial dairyfarm near Christchurch, New Zealand. They were consistently observed apparently feeding on egg batches ofthe light brown apple moth Epiphyas postvittana, which were being used as bait to assess predation rate by poten-tial biocontrol agents. The collembolan specimens were identified as the European species Dicyrtoma fusca basedon published morphological descriptions of this species. DNA sequence data of the New Zealand specimens clus-tered with sequence data from GenBank of this species from Norway and England, confirming that D. fusca pop-ulations in New Zealand originated from Europe. A GenBank sequence had previously identified a collembolanspecies from Estonia as this species, but its position in the phylogeny indicates that it is a different species. Somemorphological variations observed in arrangement of macrochaetae on the head were shown by sequence data tobe intraspecific differences only