Hirstionyssus meridianus Zemskaya, 1955

Vinarski, Maxim V. & Korallo-Vinarskaya, Natalia P., 2020, An annotated catalogue of the gamasid mites associated with small mammals in Asiatic Russia. The family Hirstionyssidae (Acari: Mesostigmata: Gamasina), Zootaxa 4838 (1), pp. 102-118 : 109

Hirstionyssus meridianus Zemskaya, 1955

Hirstionyssus meridianus Zemskaya 1955: 366 , figs 785–789.

Hirstionyssus meridianus Bregetova 1956: 179 , 191, figs 416, 417, 420, 473–475; Lange 1958: 216, pl. LXXVII (П, Р); Allred 1969: 242; Zemskaya 1973: 89; Koroleva 1977: 138, figs 3(2), 6(7); Senotrusova 1987: 81, figs 39, 40; Mašán & Fend’a 2010: 142.

Echinonyssus meridianus— Tenorio 1984: 272.

Type locality: No exact locality was reported. Zemskaya (1955) mentioned H. eversmanni from the Volgograd Region of Russia and from Turkmenistan.

Type series: Unknown (possibly in EMAMS) .

Type host: Two species of gerbils— Rhombomys opimus (Lichtenstein, 1823) and Meriones meridianus (Pallas, 1773) .

Host range: This mite is considered a specific parasite of gerbils of the genera Meriones and Rhombomys (Bretetova 1956; Zemskaya 1973).

Distribution: The species is widely distributed in the Middle East and Central Asia ( Tenorio 1984); the northwestern part of its range lies in the south of European Russia ( Bregetova 1956). It is recorded from the Central Asian republics of the former USSR as well as from Armenia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwestern China—Xin-jang are known ( Bregetova 1956; Oganjanyan 1962; Zemskaya et al. 1975; Daniel 1977; Senotrusova 1987; Ye et al. 2000; Halliday et al. 2018). The presence of H. meridianus in the fauna of Asiatic Russia needs a confirmation. We include it in our check-list on the basis of a single record from Western Siberia (without exact locality) in the catalogue of SZM collection (see http://szmn.eco.nsc.ru/Inverteb/ Gamasina .htm). In addition, there is a single (and rather doubtful) record of this mite from the South Urals, the area adjacent to Western Siberia ( Litvinova & Zavodova 1969). We consider this record as doubtful since the mites were collected from Microtus voles.