Family HYPOCHTHONIIDAE Berlese, 1910

Museums

Regional Maps

• Hypoctonidae Berlese, A. 1910. Acari nuovi. Manipulus V, VI. Redia. Giornale di entomologia, Firenze 6: 199-234 pls XVIII-XXI [original spelling].

Introduction

The family Hypochthoniidae includes five genera and 25 species world-wide (Schatz et al. 2011; Subias 2011). The family and some of its individual species are cosmopolitan, and various species have been reported to feed on fungi and bacteria, or by scavenging from dead invertebrates (Norton & Behan-Pelletier, 2009). The family is known from Australia only on the basis of one or more unidentified species of Eohypochthonius from Western Australia and Queensland, as reported by Harvey et al. (1993), Hunt et al. (1998) and Colloff & Halliday (1998), and an unidentified species and genus reported by Stone & Simpson (1990).

General References

Colloff, M.J. & Halliday, R.B. 1998. Oribatid Mites: A Catalogue of the Australian Genera and Species. Melbourne : CSIRO Publications.

Harvey, M.S., Gray, M.R., Hunt, G.S. & Lee, D.C. 1993. The cavernicolous Arachnida and Myriapoda of Cape Range, Western Australia. pp. 129-144 in Humphreys, W.F. The Biogeography of Cape Range Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum 45(Supplement)

Hunt, G.S., Colloff, M.J., Dallwitz, M. & Walter, D.E. 1998. An Interactive Key to Oribatid Mites of Australia (CD-ROM). Melbourne : CSIRO Publishing.

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.

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.

Stone, C. & Simpson, J.A. 1990. Species associations in Ips grandicollis galleries in Pinus taeda. New Zealand Journal of Forestry Science 20: 75-96.

Subias, L.S February 2011. Listado sistemático, sinonímico y biogeográfico de los ácaros oribátidos (Acariformes: Oribatida) del mundo (excepto fósiles). Departamento de Zoología, Facultad de Biología, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain. http://www.ucm.es/info/zoo/Artropodos/Catalogo.pdf [date of access 1 October 2011]

History of changes