Hypoaspis Canestrini

Joharchi, Omid & Halliday, Bruce, 2011, New species and new records of mites of the family Laelapidae (Acari: Mesostigmata) associated with Coleoptera in Iran, Zootaxa 2883, pp. 23-38 : 26-27

Genus Hypoaspis Canestrini

Hypoaspis Canestrini 1884: 1569 . Type species Gamasus krameri G. & R. Canestrini, 1881, designated by Berlese (1904).

Diagnosis. Laelapidae with an oval-shaped dorsal shield without lateral incisions, bearing 35–40 pairs of setae, including one or more pairs of Zx setae between the J and Z setae, all dorsal shield setae smooth and pointed, except a few occasionally very slightly pilose. Some opisthonotal setae greatly elongated and often appearing wavy in slide-mounted specimens, especially Z4, which is at least three times as long as J5. Post-anal seta distinctly shorter than para-anal setae. Hypostomal setae h3 distinctly longer than other hypostomal setae. Sternal shield fully developed with distinct anterior margin, approximately as wide as long, fused with endopodal plates between coxae II and III. Greatly elongated macrosetae present on femora II and III. Tarsus II with two subterminal blunt spines (al 1 and pl 1).

Notes on the genus. The genus Hypoaspis as defined here corresponds to the subgenus Hypoaspis (Hypoaspis) or Hypoaspis sens . strict. of most other authors. Great numbers of species have been described in a very looselydefined genus Hypoaspis , but Hypoaspis sens . strict. is quite small. Karg (1979) listed only 13 species, which are most easily recognised by the greatly elongate setae Z4 on the dorsal shield. Most species that have been placed in Hypoaspis actually belong to other genera, especially Gaeolaelaps Evans & Till, 1966 (reviewed by Beaulieu, 2009), because they lack the diagnostic long setae Z4. Other species that we include in Hypoaspis , but which were not listed by Karg (1979), include H. boas ( Ryke & Meyer, 1957) , H. longchuanensis Gu & Duan, 1991 (= H. longchuanensis Gu & Duan, 1993 ), H. hunanensis Ma & Zheng, 2000 , and H. terrestrisimilis Ma et al., 2003 . The only species of Hypoaspis (Hypoaspis) previously recorded from Iran are H. (H.) krameri and H. (H.) polyphyllae Khanjani & Ueckermann, 2005 ( Faraji et al., 2008) . Kamali et al. (2001) listed several other species of Hypoaspis from Iran, but we place most of those species in other genera.