Sensillanura austriaca (Gama, 1963)

Bendjaballah, Mohamed, Zoughailech, Abdelmalek, Brahim-Bounab, Hayette, Hamra-Kroua, Salah, Bedos, Anne & Deharveng, Louis, 2018, Annotated checklist of the springtails (Hexapoda: Collembola) of the Collo massif, northeastern Algeria, Zoosystema 40 (16), pp. 389-414 : 399

Sensillanura austriaca (Gama, 1963) ( Fig. 9 )

Neanura austriaca Gama, 1963: 46 .

Sensillanura austriaca – Deharveng 1981: 9.

NEW DATA. — First record of the species for Algeria.

DISTRIBUTION. — French and Austrian Alps ( Deharveng 1981), Algeria.

REMARK

Frequent in our samples, locally abundant (Oued Z’hor). Sensillanura austriaca , well characterized morphologically among Palaearctic Neanurinae , is the only species of the genus Sensillanura and of the tribe Sensillanurini known in Europe (the others being North American). Described from eastern Austria, it is frequently found in forest litter of western margins of French Alps. Its presence in the Collo massif i.e., 1000 km more south than its previous southernmost occurrence, and beyond the Mediterranean Sea, is surprising. It has probably not been introduced, as the species is not rare and has been found in several moderately disturbed locations. Sensillanura austriaca has never been recorded in intermediate regions, i.e., southwestern Alps and the whole Italian peninsula, which have been well sampled ( Deharveng 1979, Dallai et al. 1995). To our knowledge, no other taxon among Euro-Mediterranean invertebrates presents such a gap in its distribution, which cannot be explained by any of the current biogeographical hypotheses concerning the origin of the Maghreb fauna ( Jeannel 1956).

Subfamily PSEUDACHORUTINAE Börner, 1906 Genus Kenyura Salmon, 1954

Figures

FIG. 9. — Sensillanura austriaca (Gama, 1963). Body size: 0.6-0.8 mm.