Niphargus puteanus (Koch in Panzer, 1836)

Published record: L.162—Fange aux Mochettes (Leloup & Jacquemart 1963).

The species was discovered in a peat-bog, near the Baraque Fraiture, between Laroche-en-Ardenne and Vielsalm (Leloup & Jacquemart 1963; Fig. 4; App. 1). The species is otherwise distributed in Upper Rhine and Upper Danube valleys (Fišer et al. 2017). As we could not study the material from Belgium, we cannot give any conclusions on species true identity.

In any case, the finding is rather interesting from ecological point of view. The locality is at an elevation of 600 m, in a forest brook draining a peat bog of type Vagineto-Sphagnetum. Specimens were collected in the root net of Molinia obstructed by sand and in very acid water. It may inhabit the water sheet between the peat and the bedrock and was washed in the brook by a flood. Only a few Niphargus species inhabit such shallow subterranean habitats (Fišer et al. 2006, 2010; 2015b; Copilaş-Ciocianu et al. 2017), and the specimens from Belgium would be the northern most record of this kind of species.