Genus Hirstionyssus Fonseca, 1948

Hirstionyssus Fonseca, 1948: 266 .

Dermanyssus Dugès, 1834: 18 (partim).

Liponyssus Kolenati, 1859: 172 (partim).

Echinonyssus Hirst, 1925: 51 sensu Tenorio & Radovsky, 1979 .

Sciurinyssus Koyumdzhieva, 1978: 49.

Type species: Dermanyssus arcuatus C.L. Koch, 1839 = Liponyssus arcuatus (C.L. Koch) sensu Oudemans, 1913 (see remarks below)

General morphological diagnosis: see Evans & Till (1966: 277), Mašán & Fend’a (2010: 71).

Notes: Some authors, following Tenorio & Radovsky (1979) and Tenorio (1984), accept Hirstionyssus as a junior synonym of Echinonyssus Hirst, 1925 . On the other hand, Mašán & Fend’a (2010) consider Echinonyssus as a monotypic genus restricted to the type species Echinonyssus nasutus Hirst, 1925 . This point of view corresponds to that of Russian acarologists (Bregetova 1956; Zemskaya 1973; Goncharova et al. 1991) and is followed here.

The genus has been recorded from all continents and comprises more than 115 species (Tenorio 1984). The ex- USSR acarofauna includes approximately 30 species of Hirstionyssus (Bregetova 1977), nearly 20 of which have been recorded from the Asiatic Russia territory.

The identity of the type species of the genus Hirstionyssus, Dermanyssus arcuatus C.L. Koch, 1839 sensu Oudemans, 1913, has been debated in the literature. Most authors agree that it is a doubtful taxon, and its taxonomic treatment was different in the works of different acarologists. Though Evans & Till (1966) and Tenorio (1984) viewed D. arcuatus as identical with Hirstionyssus talpae Zemskaya, 1955, it was re-named by Zuevsky (1970) as Hirstionyssus apodemi . A very wide spectrum of hosts of Dermanyssus arcuatus C.L. Koch sensu Oudemans, 1913, ranging from bats to carnivores (Oudemans, 1913a, b), indicates that a mixture of several species might have been united under this taxonomic name.