Family Hirstionyssidae Till & Evans, 1966

Hirstionyssinae Till & Evans, 1966: 276 .

Type genus: Hirstionyssus Fonseca, 1948 .

The family is of almost worldwide distribution. It includes 5–6 genera (Tenorio & Radovsky 1985; Hallan, 2003), of which the largest and most widely distributed is Hirstionyssus . The ecological characteristics of this family is given above (see Introduction). This taxon is often considered as a subfamily of the Laelapidae sensu lato (see, for example, Lindquist et al. 2009; Beaulieu et al. 2011).