Spinturnix psi (Kolenati, 1856)

Sachanowicz, Konrad, Krištofík, Ján & Ciechanowski, Mateusz, 2014, Spinturnicid mites of bats in Albania - host spectrum and morphometrics as a tool of species separation, Journal of Natural History 48 (43 - 44), pp. 2661-2674 : 2671-2672

Spinturnix psi (Kolenati, 1856)

Records: Koman, 12 August 2003, 1 ♂, 2 ♀♀, 1 nymph; Çorovodë, 8 July 2011, 1 ♂, 2 ♀♀ and Tepelene, 10 July 2011, 4 ♂♂, 1 ♀, 1 nymph, all from M. capaccinii ; Vanister, 22 April 2004, 4 ♂♂, 5 ♀♀, 1 nymph and 16 September 2012, 1 ♂, 2 ♀♀, 1 nymph; Butrint, 24 April 2004, 1 ♀, all from M. schreibersii .

It occurs mainly on different species of the genus Miniopterus and more rarely also on R. ferrumequinum , M. capaccinii ( Rudnick 1960) , M. emarginatus ( Dusbábek 1964) , M. myotis ( Deunff 1977) , M. longipes (Dobson, 1873) , M. nattereri and V. murinus . The species is distributed in the Palaearctic, Oriental and Australasian regions and Madagascar ( Uchikawa et al. 1994). In total, we collected 28 individuals (prevalence 35.5%, mean intensity 2.6, relative density 0.9), among them 13 from M. capaccinii and 15 from M. schreibersii .

In Europe, 15 spinturnicid species were recorded on bats: one species of the genus Paraperiglischrus Rudnick, 1960 , one species with two subspecies of Eyndhovenia Rudnick, 1960 and 13 species of the genus Spinturnix von Heyden, 1826 ( Deunff 1977; Uchikawa and Dusbábek 1978; Deunff et al. 1986, 1990, 1997, 2004). From the Balkan Peninsula the occurrence of eight species was reported ( Beron 1968, 1973, 1974b), while in Albania we recorded 10 species. All of them are new for the fauna of this country and three species, S. helvetiae , S. kolenatii and S. nobleti , are new for the Balkans. Since 32 bat species were recorded in Albania ( Uhrin et al. 1996; K. Sachanowicz & M. Ciechanowski, unpublished data), including R. mehelyi , M. brandtii and Tadarida teniotis (Rafinesque, 1814) not placed in Table 2, further mite species may be expected there, including S. andegavinus Deunff, 1977 , which parasitizes mainly M. daubentonii ; S. bechsteini Deunff et al., 2004 , parasitizing M. bechsteinii ; S. punctata , parasitizing B. barbastellus ; and P. rhinolophinus and the subspecies E. e. oudemansi, parasitizing bats of the genus Rhinolophus . However, we did not find spinturnicids on further 13 species (102 bats), including hosts of expected mite species, from which 1–21 individuals were examined ( Table 2).

In all but one case we recorded only one spinturnicid species on a single bat, which confirms that a lack of or low level of different mite species co-occurrence on the same bat hosts might be due to competitive exclusion between these parasites ( Bruyndonckx et al. 2009). This may also depend on how intensively bat hosts have been studied. In only one male of M. capaccinii did we find two species ( S. psi and S. myoti ) on the same host. Mite species recorded on more than one bat host species included: E. e. euryalis (on two hosts), S. myoti (four), S. plecotina (three), and S. psi (two). A recent genetic study ( Bruyndonckx et al. 2009) indicated that E. euryalis and S. myoti may each contain two distinct species associated with different bat hosts ( R. ferrumequinum versus R. euryale and M. myotis / M. oxygnathus versus M. nattereri , respectively).

Although the sample size in some cases was small, we show that all mite species included in the present study were separable based on their basic measurements with idiosoma length and width and dorsal shield length as the most important characters.