Laelaspis humeratus (Berlese)

Joharchi, Omid, Jalaeian, Mahdi, Paktinat-Saeej, Saeed & Ghafarian, Azadeh, 2012, A new species and new records of Laelaspis Berlese (Acari, Laelapidae) from Iran, ZooKeys 208, pp. 17-25 : 20

Laelaspis humeratus (Berlese)

Laelaps (Laelaspis) humeratus Berlese 1904: 425.

Hypoaspis humerata .- Evans and Till 1966: 212; Lapina 1976: 43.

Laelaspis humeratus .- Hull 1925: 210; Willmann 1951: 113; Hunter 1961: 675; Salmane 2001a: 131; Salmane 2001b: 34; Salmane and Brumelis 2010: 390.

Hypoaspis (Laelaspis) humerata .- Karg 1979: 102; 1982: 250; 1989: 120.

Hypoaspis humerata .- Bregetova 1977: 545.

Specimens examined.

One female, Alborz, Karaj, 35°56'N, 51°22'E, alt. 2000 m, 11 July 2011, O. Joharchi coll., in nest of Tetramorium caespitum .

Notes.

Laelaspis humeratus was described from Luxemburg (Berlese 1904), and has been recorded from Latvia ( Lapina 1976; Salmane 2001a, 2001b), Russia and Austria (Bregetova 1977), and England ( Hull 1925; Evans and Till 1966). This species was found associated with at least two genera of ants ( Lasius and Tetramorium ), free-living in soil, litter and meadows, and from the nests of mammals. This species is easily recognised by the large number of long, thick and wavy opisthonotal setae, the bidentate movable digit and the tridentate fixed digit. Haddad Irani-Nejad et al. (2003) recorded an unidentified species as Laelaspis near humerata ( Berlese 1904), but the identity of that species cannot be confirmed because the specimens have been lost, so this is the first record of Laelaspis humeratus from Iran.