Ophionyssus natricis, Megnin, 1884

OrlovaK, Maria V., HallidayK, Bruce, ReevesK, Will K., DoroninK, Igor V., MishchenkoK, Vladimir A., VyalykhK, Ivan V. & KidovK, Artem A., 2024, Review of the distribution and biology of the snake mite Ophionyssus natricis (Acari: Macronyssidae), Acarologia 64 (2), pp. 637-653 : 644

Misidentifications of Ophionyssus natricis

Some published records of O. natricis actually refer to other species. Biological Services (2015) includes an illustration of a mite on the head of a snake, but the mite appears to be Ophiomegistus Banks, 1914 and not Ophionyssus . The illustration of a snake mite in Maxwell (2022) shows an oribatid mite. Sabu et al. (2002) reported a mite they identified as O. natricis on snakes in India. Their illustration shows an unidentified species of Astigmata, not O. natricis , and the occurrence of O. natricis inside nodules of necrotic tissue as they reported would be extremely unusual.