Accepted by R. Palma: 13 Jan. 2017; published: 3 Mar. 2017 253 ZOOTAXA ISSN 1175-5326 (print edition) ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition) Copyright © 2017 Magnolia Press Zootaxa 4238 (2): 253–257 http://www.mapress.com/j/zt/ Correspondence https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4238.2.5 http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:27AECF10-5C8D-404D-8DAC-A2CE910BAD32 A new species of the genus Amyrsidea (Phthiraptera: Amblycera: Menoponidae) parasitizing domestic chickens in Saudi Arabia AZZAM ALAHMED 1 , YOUSIF ALDRYHIM 2 , MOHAMMED SHOBRAK 3 & MOHAMED NASSER 4,5 1 Research Chair of Insect Vector Borne Diseases, Department of Plant Protection, College of Food and Agriculture Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 2 King Saud University Museum of Arthropods Department of Plant Protection, College of Food and Agriculture Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 3 Department of Biology, Science College, Ta'if University, Ta'if, Saudi Arabia. 4 Department of Entomology, Faculty of Science Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. 5 Corresponding author. E-mail: mgnasser@sci.asu.edu.eg Amyrsidea Ewing, 1927 is a genus of chewing lice comprising 52 species, divided into five subgenera: Amyrsidea sensu stricto, Argimenopon Eichler, 1947, Cracimenopon Carriker, 1954, Desumenopon Carriker, 1954 and Numidimenopon Scharf & Price, 1977 (see Price et al. 2003: 86), which parasitise a wide range of hosts belonging to the avian order Galliformes (see Price et al. 2003: 321). Species of Amyrsidea can be distinguished from species of Menacanthus Neumann, 1912—the other menoponid genus with species parasitic on the same hosts—by lacking ventral spinous processes in the head (Scharf & Price 1977: 815). Revisions of all subgenera and species of Amyrsidea, including keys for their identification, were published by Scharf & Price (1977, 1983) and Scharf & Emerson (1983, 1984). The first published record of Amyrsidea from domestic chickens was made by Fabiyi (1972) from material collected in the Vom area of Benue-Plateau State, Nigeria, but he did not identify his samples to the species level and only referred to them as belonging to the “powelli group” of species. In Saudi Arabia, the genus Amyrsidea was first recorded by Aldryhim (1991) during his work on the chewing lice of domestic fowl in the central region of the Kingdom but, again, his samples were not identified to the species level. Recently, another species of this genus – Amyrsidea (Argimenopon) minuta Emerson, 1961—was identified parasitizing exotic Indian peafowl, Pavo cristatus Linnaeus, 1758, in Saudi Arabia (Nasser et al. 2015a: 89). The species Amyrsidea (Argimenopon) fulvomaculata (Denny, 1842), with type host Coturnix coturnix (Linnaeus, 1758), was regarded as a “Species Indeterminata” by Scharf & Price (1983: 449), who examined the three syntype females and designated a lectotype. These authors could not make a definite identification of the species due to the poor quality of those females and the lack of any male louse from the type host. However, Scharf & Price (1983: 449) wrote that the syntype females of Am. (Ar.) fulvomaculata resembled Amyrsidea (Argimenopon) perdicis (Denny, 1842) closely. Our new species clearly differs from Am. (Ar .) perdicis in the morphology of the male genitalia and the hypopharyngeal sclerites. Considering the widespread world distribution of chickens and the many studies and publications dealing with their chewing lice, but without any record of Amyrsidea from them (e.g. Emerson 1956; Abul-hab 1975; Price et al. 2003; Sychra et al. 2008), there has been doubts about the occurrence of an Amyrsidea species on domestic chickens (Roger D. Price pers. comm. 1988). However, even if our samples are the result of a cross contamination from an unknown host to chickens and quails, we believe that they represent an undescribed and unnamed species, and our aim is to describe and illustrate it in this paper. Material and methods The samples were collected by Yousif N. Aldryhim during his work on chewing lice of domestic birds in central region of Saudi Arabia (Aldryhim 1991). Visual inspection of the birds was used as the main method for louse collection. Two domestic chickens, Gallus gallus domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758), and one common quail, Coturnix coturnix (Linnaeus, 1758), were found infested by Amyrsidea in a small backyard breeder farm near Riyadh (24 o 46’ N; 46 o 32’ E). Samples were first preserved in 70% ethyl alcohol and later processed using sodium hydroxide to be slide-mounted in Canada