مجله ایرانی کنه شناسی
سال:1395 | دوره:5 | شماره:2 |تعداد مقالات:9

The oribatid mite family Gehypochthoniidae has a cosmopolitan distribution, however, is absent in the Ethiopian and Antarctic regions. This family consists of only one genus, Gehypochthonius Jacot, 1936, with eight species: G. antonii Lombardini, 1962 "sp. Inq" (distributed in Italy), G. frondifer Aoki, 1975 (Japan), G. gracilis Pankov, 2002 (East Asiatic Russia), G. marianoi Martinez and Bernava Laborde, 2000 (Argentina), G. rhadamanthus Jacot, 1936 (Semicosmopolitan), G. strenzkei Lee, 1982 (Australia), G. urticinus (Berlese, 1910) (Nearctic) and G. xarifae Strenzke, 1963 (Oriental) (Subias 2016). In this paper, we report the first record of the family Gehypochthoniidae and Gehypochthonius rhadamanthus from Iran.

Mites of the superfamily Eviphidoidea are primarily humus- and litter-inhabiting predators, living in transient habitats such as dung, carrion, and beach wrack and/or in phoretic relationships with a variety of arthropods (Lindquistet al.2009). The genus Copriphis Berlese, 1910 is the largest genus of Eviphididae with about 35 species living in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia, central and southern Europe in association with coprophagous beetles, especially Scarabaeoidea (Karg 1993; Lindquist et al.2009; Masan and Halliday 2009, 2010).

The family Oppiidae Sellnick, 1937 (Acari: Oribatida) is one of the most species rich families of the suborder Oribatida (Subias and Balogh 1989). This cosmopolitan family comprises 134 genera, 39 subgenera, 1, 025 species and 54 subspecies (Subias 2016). Oppiids occur in almost all terrestrial habitats worldwide and they are especially represented in soil, litter and moss samples and fungi make up the bulk of oppiid diets (Subias and Balogh 1989; Norton and Behan- Pelletier 2009). However, Seniczack (1975) found that in addition to feeding on fungi, oppiid mites from Poland also feed on algae, lichen, rotten leaves, humus, and Oppia nitens even on carrion.

The family Canestriniidae contains about 95 genera and 305 species (Haitlinger 2012). In 1991, one male of the Camirohylla feziana was collected from Morocco and described by Haitlinger for the first time. Deutonymph and larva of this species were found from Spain (Balearic Islands) and described in 2001 (Haitlinger 2001). In Iran, fauna of canestriniid mites is unknown. Until now, only one species, Coleopterophagus baali Haitlinger, 1990, was reported and described from Iran.