Family EVIPHIDIDAE Berlese, 1913

Museums

Regional Maps

• Eviphidini Berlese, A. 1913. Acarotheca Italica. Firenze : Ricci 221 pp.

Introduction

The family Eviphididae in Australia was very poorly known, but has recently been revised (Halliday 2010). The known Australian fauna now consists of 14 species in four genera. The European fauna includes 29 species (Mašán & Halliday 2010), so we may expect the world total to exceed 150 species when more international collections are studied in depth. The Australian species are found in soil and dung, seaweed, and other types of decaying organic matter, where they appear to feed on nematodes. At least one species may be a beneficial predator of pest nematodes. Many species are phoretic on insects, especially dung beetles, except the genus Evimirus, which occurs in litter on the forest floor, and is not phoretic. Several other genera occur in that habitat in other countries (Lindquist et al. 2009), but the non-phoretic genera are under-represented in Australia. Lowry (1980) and Proctor et al. (2011) recorded unidentified Eviphididae from Western Australia and Queensland respectively. Adolphson & Kinnear (2008) also recorded unidentified species of Eviphididae in Western Australia, but these specimens were later shown to belong to the family Laelapidae (Halliday 2010).

General References

Adolphson, H. & Kinnear, A. 2008. Acari (mite) assemblages under plantations of bluegum, Eucalyptus globulus, in southwestern Australia. Pedobiologia 51: 427–437

Halliday, R.B. 2010. Revision of the Australian Eviphididae (Acari: Mesostigmata). Zootaxa 2596: 1-60

Lindquist, E.E., Krantz, G.W. & Walter, D.E. 2009. Order Mesostigmata. pp.124-232 in Krantz, G.W. & Walter, D.E. (eds). A Manual of Acarology. Lubbock, Texas : Texas Tech University Press Third edition, 807 pp.

Lowry, J.W.J. 1980. Ecological Relationships of Western Australian Cavernicoles. MSc. Thesis, School of Zoology, University of New South Wales. Vol. 1 367 pp., Vol. 2 204 pp. + appendices

Mašán, P. & Halliday, R.B. 2010. Review of the European genera of Eviphididae (Acari: Mesostigmata) and the species occurring in Slovakia. Zootaxa 2585: 1–122

Proctor, H., Kanowski, J., Catterall, C.P., Wardell-Johnson, G. & Reis, T. 2011. Rainforest-restoration success as judged by assemblages of soil- and litter-dwelling mites (Arachnida: Acari). Zoosymposia 6: 234–254

History of changes