Steinernema
pui Qiu, Zhao, Wu, Lv & Pang, 2011
Summary: Steinernema pui was
recovered from a soil sample collected from Xiao-jie town, Jing-hong city,
Xi-shuang-ban-na district in Yunnan province,
the People’s Republic of China
in December 2002. Both morphological and molecular evidence show congruently
that S. pui belongs to the glaseri group. It can be separated
from all described Steinernema species by a combination of morphological
and morphometrical characters of adults and juveniles, including spicule and
gubernaculum shape of the first generation males (spicule bearing an aperture
on the tip and an irregular-shaped concave on ventral side of the lamina close
to the tip; gubernaculum with a short needle-shaped cuneus); the tail and vulva
shape of the first generation females (tail conoid and pointed with a mucron;
vulva with a short double flapped epiptygma) and the body and tail length,
distance from anterior end to excretory pore and to the base of pharynx of
infective juveniles. This species can also be distinguished from other Steinernema
species by DNA sequences of D2D3 and ITS regions of rDNA, and by negative
results of cross-breeding tests with the closely related species S.
longicaudum and S. guangdongense.