Oribatula (O.) beccus Djaparidze, 1990

Murvanidze, Maka & Mumladze, Levan, 2016, Annotated checklist of Georgian oribatid mites, Zootaxa 4089 (1), pp. 1-81 : 64

Oribatula (O.) beccus Djaparidze, 1990

Distribution in Georgia. different landscape zones (see remark)

Global distribution. Caucasus

Ecology. Different soil types

Remark. O. beccus from Georgia was descibed by Djaparidze (1990a) without indication of exact finding sites. Djaparidze describes the species as numerous in different landscape zones: dry lowland subtropics, montane forests with moderate humid climate, high montane forests and alpine meadows. The presence of the holotype in the collections of the Institute of Zoology is also indicated, however, we could find neither holotype, nor paratypes.

In the Catalogue this species is placed as a synonym of Oribatula (O.) tibialis alifera Subías, 2000 . O. (O.) tibialis alifera was created by Subías (2000) as nomina nuova with for the earlier described species O. tibialis alata Iordansky, 1991 as a synonym to O. (O.) tibialis alifera . Within this publication, no arguments are provided for such synonymy. It is only mentioned that the species described by Iordansky (1991) was found on Iberian Peninsula too (Subías 2000). O. (O.) beccus and O. (O.) tibialis alata are similar in having sparsely barbed lamellar setae and clearly protruding pteromorphae, however, there as a notable difference in body size between them: 580– 600 µm for O. (O.) beccus and 408 µm for O. (O.) tibialis alata . Considering this difference as important, we regard O. (O.) beccus as a valid species and reject its synonymy with Oribatula (O.) tibialis alifera .