Taxonomics Of The Family Erythraeidae From Wulingshan Area

The present dissertation mainly deals with the taxonomics of the family Erythraeidae from Wulingshan area covering 71 counties of Hubei,Hunan,Chongqing and Guizhou.The history and current situations,purpose and research significance of this family both in Wulingshan and China were also reviewed briefly.Nowadays,there are 832 known species of 59 genera in the family,of which only 14 genera and 44 species we known both active postlarval stages(adults and deutonymph)and larvae.So far,classification system of the family given by Makol & Wohltmann in 2012 has been being widely accepted by acarologists.Due to the erythraeid larvae and adults are vastly different in living habits and morphological features,at the present stage,there are the classification systems for the larvae and and for adults with different terminologies.Moreover,as the larval specimens are much easier to be collected,and only a few of species are known based on the adults,the taxonomics of the family has to be undertaken with larval specimens.The common classification characteristics of the erythraeid larvae are as follows: chaetotaries of femur,genu,tibia and tarsus of palp;the shape and setae of the scutum;the seatal formula of legs,lengths of each leg and genu,tibia,tarsus of the leg I-III;the number of dorsal and ventral idiosoma setae.There were two typical terminology systems for morphologic basis of Erythraeidae classification,Southcott's and Welbourn & Young's terms.The latter one,with definition of the leg formula in detail,was concluded with idiomatic terms used by acarologists.In the present study,the terminology and abbreviations are adapted from Haitlinger & Saboori(1996)and Saboori et al.(2009),which are much refined on the basis of Welbourn & Young's.In total,25 species of 7 genera in Erythraeidae are discribed,of which 1 genus is firstly recorded from China,12 species are new to science,two species are undetermined.The new to species of Erythraeidae are as follows.Erythraeus(E.)nudus sp.nov.Leptus sipinileala sp.nov.Leptus claviscutalus sp.nov.Leptus tauforma sp.nov.Leptus nonasetus sp.nov.Leptus longisolenidiona sp.nov.Leptus xiaoxinicus sp.nov.Abrolophus dens sp.nov.Abrolophus spatha sp.nov.Marantelophus dubifurcatus sp.nov.Marantelophus cavus sp.nov.Caeculisoma semisomnus sp.nov.The present study primaryly verified faunal features of Erythraeidae in Wulingshan area of China with increasing our knowledge on species diversity of the Acari and relationships among the erythraeid mites and their hosts.The results could provide the basis for exploring the biocontrol potential of the paprasitic larvae and prodatory adultes of the mites.