Pontarachna punctulum Phillippi, 1840

Chatterjee, Tapas & Durucan, Furkan, 2022, A checklist of halacarid and pontarachnid mites (Acari: Halacaridae and Pontarachnidae) found in seagrass habitats, Persian Journal of Acarology 11 (2), pp. 187-223 : 205

Pontarachna punctulum Phillippi, 1840

Report found in seagrass habitats – This species was reported found among seagrass and also in mixed habitat containing Zostera sp. and algae Fucus sp. , Sargassum sp. from Rovinj (Adriatic Sea, Medioterannean Sea) ( Viets 1939, 1940). This was reported from coast of Tuscany, Italy among sea grass meadows of Posidonia oceanica , colonized a rocky bottom at 8 m to 25 m depth ( Bedini et al. 2011); from Punta Vico—Lacco Ameno of Ischia, among Posidonia oceanica sea grass ( Mari and Morselli 1983). Thayer et al. (1984) listed this species in the epiphytic fauna of sea grass Zostera marina from North Carolina to Nova Scotia. This was collected from Spain ( Stern et al. 2019) among sea grass Posidonia oceanica .

Remarks – This has been commonly found in Mediterranean area (Chatterjee et al. 2019, Pešić et al. 2019). There are also some records from the Black Sea, USA and Canada (Chatterjee et al. 2019). Durucan (2021b) reported this species from Izmir - Urla-Karantina Island, Turkey, Aegean Sea among oyster, bivalve mollusc Pinctada radiata (Leach, 1814) .