Haemogamasus Berlese 1889

Genus Haemogamasus Berlese, 1889

Haemogamasus Berlese, 1889: 2.

Dermanyssus Dugès, 1834: 18, partim.

Hypoaspis G. Canestrini, 1884: 1569, partim. Euhaemogamasus Ewing, 1933: 3.

Groschaftella Přívora & Samšiňák, 1957: 270. Terasterna Zhou, Gu & Wen, 1995: 172, 175.

Type species: Haemogamasus hirsutus Berlese, 1889.

General morphological diagnosis: see Kim et al. (1987), Mašán & Fend’a (2010: 71).

Remarks. The genus was established by Berlese (1889) to include the single species, Hg. hirsutus from the European mole (Fig. 1). This species has not been found in Asiatic Russia although numerous recordings of Hg. hirsutus from the European part of the former USSR are known (Nikulina, 2004). The most important taxonomic works on the genus are those by Vitzthum (1930), Bregetova (1949, 1956a), Keegan (1951), Evans & Till (1966), Allred (1969), Williams et al. (1978), Haitlinger (1988), and Lundquist (1990). The species of the genus were thought to inhabit all continents, except South America (Bregetova, 1956a; Williams et al., 1978; Lundquist, 1990), but later records of Haemogamasus from Argentina and Chile have now been published (Mosquera, 1988; Casanueva et al., 1994; Herrin & Sage, 2012). The genus includes about 60 species, 12 of which have been recorded in Europe (Mašán & Fend’a, 2010) and nearly 30 species in the former USSR (Senotrusova, 1987; Goncharova et al., 1991). One of these species, Hg. pontiger (Berlese, 1904), is of almost cosmopolitan distribution, being recorded from the Old World, the Americas, Antarctica and Australia (Lundquist, 1990; Halliday, 2011). Ecologically, most species of Haemogamasus are parasites of small mammals and abundant in their hosts’ nests and shelters (Balashov, 2009). In general, these mites are opportunistic parasites able to exploit a wide range of host species (Bregetova, 1949); some of them were collected also from birds and birds’ nests (Haitlinger, 1988; Gwaizdowicz et al., 2006). Strict host specificity in the genus is rarely observed (Bregetova & Nel’zina, 1952). Some taxa (Hg. pontiger) are regarded as predators (Halliday, 2011), and their relationships with Micromammalia are rather indirect. The role of different Haemogamasus species as vectors of viruses and other pathogenic microorganisms has been elucidated by many authors (Zemskaya, 1973; Yakimenko et al., 2000; Valiente Moro et al., 2005; Žákovská et al., 2008; Mi’tkova et al., 2015).