New species of the genus Atractides Koch, 1837 (Acari: Hydrachnidia: Hygrobatidae) from Iran.

In this paper four water mite species of the genus Atractides Koch, 1837 (Acari, Hygrobatidae) from Iran are described as new to science. Three of these have a complicated taxonomic history with misidentification and/or confusion. The populations from Iran provisionally assigned by Pešić et al. (2004) to Atractides lunipes Lundblad, 1956 is described as A. zagrosensis sp. nov. The male specimen from Bakhtiari Province, originally assigned by Pešić et al. (2004) to A. fluviatilis (Szalay, 1929) is described as A. bakhtiari sp. nov. Two of the new species belong to the nodipalpis-species group. The populations of the latter group in Iran were analysed using canonical discriminant analyses. Morphological analysis focused on morphometric characters helped us to resolve issues within this group of species and to correct the previous misidentifications. Atractides farsensis sp. nov. is a sister species of A. robustus (Sokolow, 1940) and is described from Fars province. The male specimen from Kerman province originally assigned by Asadi et al. (2003) to A. nodipalpis Thor, 1899 is here described as A. kljajici sp. nov. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]