Androlaelaps circularis (Ewing)

Howell, Lindsey, Jelden, Katelyn, Rácz, Elizabeth, Gardner, Scott L. & Gettinger, Donald, 2016, Arthropods infesting small mammals (Insectivora and Rodentia) near Cedar Point Biological Station in southwestern Nebraska, Insecta Mundi 2016 (478), pp. 1-16 : 8

Androlaelaps circularis (Ewing)

Type host: Peromyscus truei (Shufedlt, 1885) ; Type locality: Salina, Utah.

Deposition, host records, and locality: HWML 101731, 101732, and 101733, Pm. maniculatus / Ackley 2013.

Remarks: Androlaelaps (subgenus Eubrachylaelaps ) spp. are distinctive, highly sclerotized, circularshaped mites associated primarily with peromyscine rodents in North and Central America, and with Akodontine and Abrotrichine rodents in South America ( Gettinger and Gardner 2015). Androlaelaps circularis has been reported from a long list of neotomine rodents in North and Central America ( Furman 1955). The wide range of morphological variation across closely related host species and a wide geographic range has never been studied critically. Although the implication in the literature points toward intraspecific geographic variation (see Furman 1955), in South America, a morphometric analysis of the congeneric species Androlaelaps rotundus (Fonseca, 1936) concluded that this nominal form is a composite of cryptic species, each associated with a separate host species ( Gettinger and Owen 2000). The subgenus Eubrachylaelaps is in great need of revision to evaluate this variation, and to assess the monophyly of these mites infesting different host groups in the Nearctic (Neotominae) and Neotropical (Sigmodontinae) regions.