Geholaspis Berlese, 1918

Babaeian, Esmaeil, Halliday, Bruce & Saboori, Alireza, 2015, A new species of Geholaspis Berlese (Acari: Mesostigmata: Macrochelidae) from Northern Iran, Zootaxa 3925 (3), pp. 422-430 : 423

Genus Geholaspis Berlese, 1918

Macrocheles (Geholaspis) Berlese, 1918: 145 .

Type species. Gamasus longispinosus Kramer, 1876 , by original designation.

Diagnosis of the genus (female and male). Dorsal shield oblong or widely oval, bearing 28 pairs of brush-like or smooth (setae j5, j6, z5, z6, J2 and J5) setae. Dorsal shield seta j1 short and plumose, z1 smooth or barbed. Dorsal shield seta j5 is displaced posteriorly to a position behind the base of seta z5. Metasternal plates bearing st4 and iv3 free (subgenus Geholaspis s. str.) or fused to endopodal plates (subgenus Cyrtocheles Valle, 1953 ). Ventri-anal shield usually wider than long, with five pairs of pre-anal setae and a pair of inguinal pores. Deutosternal groove with five wide rows of fine denticles. Corniculi elongate and narrow. Chelicerae robust, movable digit with 2–3 denticles, fixed digit with fewer than six teeth (rarely more as G. (G.) biperforatus ). Epistome with triangular serrate base and an elongate, tapering bifid median process. Males with holoventral shield. The male chelicera is similar to that in the genus Macrocheles , with a short dorsally-directed spermatodactyl. Femur II has a small spur. The genus Geholaspis differs from Longicheles in that Longicheles has elongate and multidentate cheliceral digits, so that both fixed and movable digits have at least eight teeth, and the epistome of Longicheles has a transverse dentate base and a narrow distally bifid median process.

Notes on the genus. The genus Geholaspis is widely distributed in the Palaearctic region, including Europe ( Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, England, Italy, Ireland, Hungary and Slovakia), Turkey and Iran (present study) ( Krauss, 1970; Bregetova, 1977; Mašán, 2003; Özbek & Bal, 2014). The presence of G. longispinosus ( Kramer, 1876) in New Zealand ( Emberson, 1973) and Longicheles mandibularis ( Berlese, 1904) in Australia ( Halliday, 2001) may be the result of human activity.