Ardeacarus ardeae (Canestrini, 1878)

Eren, Gökhan, Öztürk, Mehmet, Mironov, Sergey V., Nisbet, Hatice Özlem & Açici, Mustafa, 2023, New records of feather mites (Sarcoptiformes: Astigmata) from some birds in Türkiye, Acarological Studies 5 (2), pp. 58-68 : 65

Ardeacarus ardeae (Canestrini, 1878)

Materials examined. 1 male and 1 female from flight feathers of the great egret, Ardea alba Linnaeus, 1758 ( Pelecaniformes : Ardeidae ), Samsun, Türkiye, 2 February 2022, coll. M. Öztürk (as shown in Fig. 7 ).

Remarks. The genus Ardeacarus includes only one species, Ardeacarus ardeae , having a cosmopolitan distribution (Africa, Asia, Europe, and America), has been report- ed so far on herons of the genera Ardea , Bubulcus , Butorides , Egretta , Ixobrychus , and Nycticorax ( Pelecaniformes : Ardeidae ) ( Dubinin, 1956; Černý, 1967; Gaud, 1981; Han et al., 2016). Ardeacarus ardeae on the great egret, Ardea alba , is reported herein for the first time in Türkiye.

Considering the investigations of the feather mite fauna conducted in Türkiye, it is remarkable that these studies were mainly carried out in coastal provinces of the Black sea, especially Samsun province ( Gürler et al., 2013; Per and Aktaş, 2018). Other countries bordering the Black Sea seem to have similar ornithofauna with Türkiye according to checklists provided by the Avibase - World Bird Database ( Lepage, 2022), and therefore it would not be wrong to predict that the feather mites faunas of the countries around the Black Sea will also show similarity. The studies carried out so far in these countries reported: about 300 feather mite species in entire Russia and the former USSR ( Dubinin, 1953; 1956; Mironov, 1996; Mironov et al., 2022), including 146 species from only passerines in the coastal areas of Russian Black sea (Mironov et al., 2022); over 160 species in Ukraine (Burdejnaja and Kivganov, 2009a-c; 2011a,b; Kivganov and Chernichko, 2007; 2009a,b; 2012); over 150 species in Bulgaria ( Kolarova, 2015; Kolarova and Ilieva, 2021), over 30 species in Romania ( Constantinescu et al., 2013), and only 2 feather mites in Georgia /Sakartvelo (Bauer, 1939). The diversity of feather mite fauna in Türkiye, including to date 56 species in 34 genera and 15 families, takes the fourth places among the countries having a coast to the Black Sea ( Eren and AÇıcı, 2022; Eren et al., 2022; present study). De facto, when is compared the number of bird species in ornithoofaunas of the relevant countries according to the eBird database (2022), Türkiye places the second, with 496 bird species (versus Russia: 690; Bulgaria: 389; Georgia: 361; Ukraine: 361; Romania: 324). The main reason for the relatively low number of recovered feather mite fauna in Türkiye, comparing to the richness of its ornithofauna, is the incomparably limited number of parasitological studies of avian hosts conduct- ed in this country. Although the first feather mite report in Türkiye dates back to the 1970s, the number of studies conducted in the past 50 years does not exceed a dozen. With this study, which is a continuation of the feather mite fauna studies in Türkiye, we aimed to contribute to ornitho-parasitological investigations.

Figures

Figure 7. Ardeacarus ardeae—A-B. Male and female (scale bars: 200).