Cilliba cassidea (Hermann)

Stachowiak, Marcin, Halliday, Bruce & Bloszyk, Jerzy, 2008, Review of the genus Cilliba von Heyden (Acari: Uropodina: Cillibidae), Zootaxa 1881, pp. 1-42 : 12

Cilliba cassidea (Hermann)

Notaspis cassideus Hermann, 1804: 93 ; Radford, 1950: 52.

Uropoda clavus Haller, 1881: 183; Kramer, 1882: 411 (synonymy by Michael, 1894).

Discopoma cassidea .— Berlese, 1886: 9.

Cilliba (Discopoma) cassidea .— Michael, 1894: 307.

Cilliba circularis Trägårdh, 1931: 19 . (new synonymy)

Cilliba cassideus .— Oudemans, 1936: 406.

Cilliba cassidea .— Trägårdh, 1944: 176; Willmann, 1955: 209; Evans, 1964: 60; 1972: 198; Van Daele & Heungens, 1975: 273; Athias-Binche, 1977a: 33; 1977b: 575; 1978: 71; 1981a: 169; 1981b: 139; 1983a: 30; 1983b: 95; Evans & Till, 1979: 259; Bloszyk, 1984: 70; 1998: 99; Bloszyk & Olszanowski, 1986: 193; O’Connell & Bolger, 1997: 254; Bloszyk et al., 2003: 34; 2004: 1506; 2006: 5; Cole et al., 2004: 339.

Uropoda (Cilliba) cassidea .— Hirschmann & Zirngiebl-Nicol, 1964: 19; 1965: 4; 1969b: 58; Peċina, 1970a: 422; 1970b: 35; 1975: 136; Hirschmann, 1979a: 20; 1979b: 79; 1993: 363; Karg, 1989: 176; Maraun et al., 2001: 227; Mašán, 2001: 283; Wiśniewski, 1979: 68; 1993a: 249; 1993b: 421; Wiśniewski & Hirschmann, 1993: 191; Skorupski & Gołojuch, 1996: 78; Skorupski & Luxton, 1998: 433; Gwiazdowicz, 1999: 39; 2000: 31.

Cilliba cf sellnicki .— Athias-Binche, 1979: 570.

Uropoda cassidea .— Kontschán, 2002: 196; 2003a: 55; 2003b: 119; 2003c: 8; 2003d: 186.

Material examined. As given previously ( Bloszyk et al., 2006).

Redescription. As given previously ( Bloszyk et al., 2006).

Ecology. This species is widely distributed throughout Europe, from Turkey in the east to Spain in the west. The most northern populations are in Norway, and the most southern in northern Italy ( Pečina, 1975; Wiśniewski & Hirschmann, 1993; and personal observations). Various authors have recorded it from Albania, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Kontschán (2003d) recorded this species from Greece but this is likely to be a misidentification, because of the high altitude of this record (2200 m). In Poland, as for other representatives of the genus, C. cassidea is characterised by a low frequency in samples ( Fig. 67 A). It prefers marshy forest, mixed forests with spruce, and mixed deciduous forests, and only in these three forest types does its frequency exceed 1%. The distribution of C. cassidea in Poland is related to the distribution of beech ( Fagus silvatica ), and its optimal altitude is below 400 m a.s.l.

Cilliba circularis Trägårdh, 1931 , described from the Faroe Islands, cannot be distinguished from mainland European populations of C. cassidea , including those that we have examined from northern Scandinavia. We believe that C. antennurelloides ( Lombardini, 1943) , C. foroliviensis Lombardini, 1961 , and C. tripliciterscutata Lombardini, 1943 , may also be synonymous with C. cassidea , which is common in Italy. However, the descriptions and illustrations of these species are not detailed enough to allow a full comparison, and we have not had the opportunity to examine Lombardini's types.

Figures

FIGURE 67. Regional abundance of Cilliba species in geographical regions of Poland. Levels of shading represent the mean number of specimens of each species per sample (0.5 litres of seived leaf litter per sample). A = C. cassidea; B = C. insularis; C = C. erlangensis; D = C. rafalskii; E = C. sellnicki.