Family CERATOZETIDAE Jacot, 1925

Museums

Regional Maps

• Ceratozetinae Jacot, A.P. 1925. Phylogeny in the Oribatoidea. American Naturalist 59: 272-279.

Introduction

The Ceratozetidae is a large family, including 51 genera and 319 species (Schatz et al. 2011). The family is cosmopolitan, and its species occur in diverse habitats including forest litter, grassland, the forest canopy, mosses, lichens, and bogs (Norton & Behan-Pelletier 2009). Various species have been reported to feed on fungi, nematodes, and dead arthropods. The Australian Ceratozetidae are poorly known, with only one described species in each of three genera, and a further two genera that are known only from unidentified species. Unidentified species have been recorded from Australia a number of times as listed for each genus, and unidentified Ceratozetide were also reported by O'Dowd et al. (1991), Longstaff et al. (1999) and Perdomo et al. (2012).

Norton & Behan-Pelletier (2009) recorded the genus Diapterobates as a fossil in Australian amber. This was an error, and Diapterobates has an exclusively Holarctic distribution (Subias 2004; Behan-Pelletier, personal communication, 2011).

Excluded Taxa

Misidentifications

Ceratozetidae: Diapterobates Grandjean, 1936 — Grandjean, F. 1936. Les Oribates de Jean Frédéric Hermann et de son père (Arachn. Acar.). Annales de la Société Entomologique de France 105: 27-110

General References

Longstaff, B.C., Greenslade, P.J.M., Colloff, M., Reid, I., Hart, P. & Packer, I. 1999. Managing Soils in Agriculture. The Impact of Soil Tillage Practices on Soil Fauna. Canberra, Australia : Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation Publication No 99/18. pp. 65.

Norton, R.A. & Behan-Pelletier, V.M. 2009. Suborder Oribatida. pp. 430–564 in Krantz, G.W. & Walter, D.E. (eds). A Manual of Acarology. Lubbock, Texas : Texas Tech University Press Third edition, 807 pp.

O'Dowd, D.J., Brew, C.R., Christophel, D.C. & Norton, R.A. 1991. Mite-plant associations from the Eocene of southern Australia. Science (Washington, D.C.) 252: 99-101

Perdomo, G., Evans, A., Maraun, M., Sunnucks, P. & Thompson, R. 2012. Mouthpart morphology and trophic position of microarthropods from soils and mosses are strongly correlated. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 53: 56–63

Schatz, H., Behan-Pelletier, V.M., OConnor, B.M. & Norton, R.A. 2011. Suborder Oribatida van der Hammen, 1968. pp. 141–148 in Zhang, Z.-Q. Animal Biodiversity: An Outline of Higher-level Classification and Survey of Taxonomic Richness. Auckland : Magnolia Press.

History of changes