Ljania bipapillata subterranea Schwoerbel, 1964

Gerecke, Reinhard, 2014, Studies on European species of the water mite family Aturidae Thor (Acari: Hydrachnidia), Zootaxa 3841 (1), pp. 1-46 : 35

Ljania bipapillata subterranea Schwoerbel, 1964

Subspecies incerta

Remarks. The name L. bipapillata subterranea was introduced by Schwoerbel (1964a) without giving any indication about type material or a type locality (“….diejenigen Populationen, die in das Hyporheal der Bäche eingedrungen sind und hier charakteristische Umbildungen ihres Körpers und ihrer Lebensweise erfahren haben. Diese Populationen sind bei Schwoerbel 1961a und 1964 ausführlich gekennzeichnet worden“ – “those populations of L. bipapillata which have immigrated to the hyporheal of streams and here have undergone characteristic transformations of body and life style. These populations were characterized in detail in Schwoerbel 1961a and 1964 ”). In the two papers in question we find indications on various populations differing exclusively in mean values and ranges of the idiosoma length/width ratio, and a hypothesis that these differences in idiosoma shape should have developed in parallel to the immigration of the populations in question to the interstitial habitat.

There is no chance to select a neotype specimen from Schwoerbel's collection or from a specific site in nature. If we would decide to accept the name notwithstanding these negative preconditions, it would surely become a junior synonym of L. bipapillata: The character state indicated as typical for the taxon is found broadly overlapping in populations from different sizes, as is documented also by a comparison of data from Schwoerbel (1964a) and Tuzovskij (2012). Schwoerbel had possibly detected in his studies an interesting phenomenon of infraspecific morphological variation that merits attention in future studies, but the taxon has to be considered a subspecies incerta.