Family PASSALOZETIDAE Grandjean, 1954

Museums

Regional Maps

• Passalozetidae Grandjean, F. 1954. Essai de classification des Oribates (Acariens). Bulletin de la Société Zoologique de France 78: 421-446.

Introduction

The family Passalozetidae includes two genera and 52 species world-wide (Schatz et al. 2011), but appears to reach its highest level of diversity in Central Asia and the Western Palaearctic Region (Norton & Behan-Pelletier 2009; Subias 2011). The family is known from Australia only on the basis of several undescribed species of Passalozetes, reported by Springett (1976), Lee (1986), Hunt et al. (1998), Colloff & Halliday (1998), Kinnear & Tongway (2004) and Beyer et al. (2011), and unidentified Passalozetidae reported by Callan et al. (2011) and Majer et al. (2013). The Australian records are concentrated in semi-arid grassland and shrubland, and the family does not appear to occur in rainforest litter (Colloff & Halliday 1998).

General References

Beyer, S., Kinnear, A., Hutley, L.B., McGuiness, K. & Gibb, K. 2011. Assessing the relationship between fire and grazing on soil characteristics and mite communities in a semi-arid savanna of northern Australia. Pedobiologia 54: 195–200

Callan, S.K., Majer, J.D., Edwards, K. & Moro, D. 2011. Documenting the terrestrial invertebrate fauna of Barrow Island, Western Australia. Australian Journal of Entomology 50: 323–343

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

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.

Kinnear, A. & Tongway, D. 2004. Grazing impacts on soil mites of semi-arid chenopod shrublands in Western Australia. Journal of Arid Environments 56: 63–82

Lee, D.C. 1986. Taxonomy and Distribution of Sarcoptiform Mites (Cryptostigmata and Astigmata: Acari) in South Australian Soils. PhD Thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane. 272 pp.

Majer, J.D., Callan, S.K., Edwards, K., Gunawardene, N.R. & Taylor, C.K. 2013. Baseline survey of the terrestrial invertebrate fauna of Barrow Island. Records of the Western Australian Museum, Supplement 83: 13-112.

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.

Springett, J.A. 1976. The effect of planting Pinus pinaster Ait. on populations of soil microarthropods and on litter decomposition at Gnangara, Western Australia. Australian Journal of Ecology 1: 83-87

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]

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