Devibursaphelenchus kheirii sp n. (Nematoda: Ektaphelenchinae) from Iran with remarks on Devibursaphelenchus Kakuliya, 1967

Devibursaphelenchus kheirii sp. n. is described and illustrated based on morphological, morphometric and molecular data. The new species is characterised by females with 370-472 mu m body length, lip region separated from the body by a shallow constriction, three lines in lateral field, stylet short, 13.5-15.0 mu m long, lacking basal knobs or swellings, excretory pore posterior to metacorpus, vulval flap absent, post-uterine sac short, without sperm, rectum and anus obscure, posterior end of the body elongate-conoid with finely rounded terminus. Males of the new species are characterised by their tail ventrally curved after fixation, having two pairs of caudal papillae, spicules 9-11 mu m long with an elongated condylus, with rounded tip, pointed rostrum, lacking cucullus and having small conical terminal bursa. The new species comes close to D. hunanensis, D. lint and D. wangi. Beside morphological comparisons, the molecular phylogenetic analyses based on 778 bp of partial sequences of 28S rDNA D2-D3 were performed using two Bayesian inference (BI) and maximum likelihood (ML) methods and revealed that D. kheirii sp. n. formed a clade with the remaining species of the genus and one species of Ektaphelenchoides. This is the first report on occurrence of the genus Devibursaphelenchus in Iran. Devibursaphelenchus eproctatus syn. n. is proposed as a junior synonym of D. hunanensis.