The Jean Gutierrez spider mite collection

Abstract The family Tetranychidae (spider mites) currently comprises 1,275 species and represents one of the most important agricultural pest families among the Acari with approximately one hundred pest species, ten of which considered major pests. The dataset presented in this document includes all the identified spider mites composing the Jean Gutierrez Collection hosted at the CBGP (Montferrier-sur-Lez, France), gathered from 1963 to 1999 during his career at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD). It consists of 5,262 specimens corresponding to 1,564 occurrences (combination species/host plant/date/location) of 175 species. Most specimens were collected in Madagascar and other islands of the Western Indian Ocean, New Caledonia and other islands of the South Pacific and Papuasia. The dataset constitutes today the most important one available on Tetranychidae worldwide.

Funding: GBIF France and Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA).
Design description: This dataset was developed to increase the knowledge of an important agricultural pest family, the spider mites (Arthropoda, Acari, Tetranychidae). This family contains 1,275 species (Migeon andDorkeld 2006-2013), among which one hundred can be considered as pests, ten of which major pests. The spider mite collection has been established by Jean Gutierrez, acarologist of the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) from 1963 to 1999 and is presently hosted at CBGP (CBGP -INRA, Campus International de Baillarguet, 755 Avenue du Campus Agropolis, CS 30016, 34988 MONTFERRIER-sur-LEZ Cedex, France), an INRA and IRD laboratory in Montpellier. The collection contains 5,262 slides representing 1,564 occurrences (species/host plant/date/location). This collection represents a unique source of data for this family in Madagascar and New Caledonia and a major source for Pacific Islands and Mascarens Islands. The dataset should contribute to a much better understanding of this mite family in addition to the taxonomic database hosted by INRA (Migeon andDorkeld 2006-2013).

General taxonomic coverage description
All the recorded specimens in the dataset were identified to species. The identification of spider mites to species often requires the examination of male genitalia and specimens identified to genus were generally single females and have been discarded. Unidentified specimens have also been discarded. The dataset contains 175 species, i.e. 14 % of the species known in this family. Jean Gutierrez described 50 species (Table  1). Types of 49 are deposited in his collection.

Spatial coverage
The spatial coverage varies among geographic areas (Figure 1) most being collected in Madagascar and Western Indian Ocean or in New Caledonia, South Pacific and Papuasia. Not all specimens from these areas were mentioned in the literature (Figure 2) compiled in Spider Mites Web (Migeon andDorkeld 2006-2013).

Natural collections description
Collection name: Spider Mites collection of Jean Gutierrez.

Specimen preservation methods:
Specimens are preserved on microslides mounted with Hoyer medium after clearing in lactic acid and coloring with lignin pink (Gutierrez 1985). Microslides boxes are stored in the CBGP collection room maintained at 20 +/-2 °C and 25 +/-10% RH.

Method step description
There are 5,262 microscopic slides recorded in the dataset. Each one contains a single specimen. Specimens identified at genus level only, without location data, or from laboratory breeding have been discarded, for a total of 347 specimens. All (and only) indications given on the label have been recorded. Location coordinates (Decimal degrees -DD -WGS84 geodetic system) have been assigned using several geolocation tools like GoogleMaps, GeoNames and other gazetteers, completed when necessary by textual search. Country and TDWG level 4 polygon were assigned to each location (http://www.tdwg.org/standards/109/)

Uncertainty issues
Unknown collection date was set as 1 st January 1901 for 31 specimens. This convention takes advantage to be outside of the temporal range of Jean Gutierrez work, indicating the absence of temporal data. When only year was reported date was set as 1 st January of the year. When only month and year were reported, date was set as 15 th of the month. Location precision has been assigned from 0.01° DD when the place was found corresponding to a small area (1-10 km²), 0.1° DD when place was corresponding to a bigger area (10-100 km²), 0.5° DD (100-2500 km²), to 1° DD (2500-10000 km²). For one slide it was not possible to assign coordinates (location not found). Then only country reported on the label has been published.

Quality control description
The Tetranychidae nomenclature is in accordance with current reference: Spider Mites Web (Migeon andDorkeld 2006-2013) and Catalogue of Life (Roskov et al. 2014). Determinations have been performed by Jean Gutierrez himself a well-known and internationally recognized specialist (Bolland et al. 1998). In case of doubt, identification was checked and rectified before publication with present knowledge if necessary. Host plant nomenclature is in accordance to current reference (The Plant List 2013). Geographic coordinates were visually verified using the Check Coordinates tool in Diva-GIS (Hijmans et al. 2012) and manual verification (points in the sea…).