Spinturnix plecotina (Koch, 1839)

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

Spinturnix plecotina (Koch, 1839)

Records: Qafa e Malit II, 9 August 2003, 4 ♂♂, 1 ♀, 1 nymph from P. macrobullaris (this bat species recorded for the first time in Albania – Sachanowicz and Ciechanowski 2006); Lura National Park , 29 June 2011, 1 nymph from P. auritus ; Liqeni i Thores, 7 September 2012, 3 ♂♂, 3 nymphs from P. auritus ; Nojë, 14 September 2012, 1 ♀ from P. austriacus .

Female measurements (n = 2): idiosoma 1238–1256 long, 958–971 wide; dorsal shield 713–726 long, 480–492 wide; sternal shield 155–162 long, 138–142 wide.

This species occurs mainly on P. auritus , but was found also on P. teneriffae Barrett-Hamilton, 1907 ( Estrada-Peña et al. 1990), P. austriacus , R. ferrumequinum , E. nilssonii , E. serotinus , B. barbastellus and N. noctula ( Stanyukovich 1997) . It is distributed in Europe ( Haitlinger and Walter 1997), Armenia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan ( Stanyukovich 1997) and Japan ( Uchikawa and Wada 1979). In total, we found 14 individuals (prevalence 44.4%, mean intensity 2, relative density 0.9), among them seven from P. auritus , six from P. macrobullaris and one from P. austriacus . Plecotus macrobullaris is a new host species for this mite.