Tetranychoidea: Linotetranidae

Superorder Acariformes

  Order Trombidiformes

 Suborder Prostigmata

   Supercohort Eleutherengonides

 Cohort  Raphignathina

   Superfamily Tetranychoidea

       Family Linotetranidae

 

Common names: cryptic false spider mites

 

Probability of Encounter: Low

 

Quarantine importance: Low.  The Linotetranidae are associated with soil and grasses around the world.  None are known to be important plant pests.

 

Diagnosis:

• Empodium with tenent hairs.

• Prodorsum with 4 pairs of setae (vi, ve, sci, sce)

• Adult female with 3 pairs of anal setae (males with 5 pairs of ano-genital setae).

• Cheliceral bases adnate, fused mesally into a stylophore (sometimes withdrawn into the body); chelicerae with fixed digit reduced and movable digit whiplike.

• Peritremes typically chambered structures on the dorso-lateral surface of the prodorsum; naso absent; prodorsal trichobothria absent; 2 pairs of eye lenses usually present. Palps 5 segmented; usually (except Anoplopalpus) with thumbclaw process (claw-like seta on the palp tibia and a thumb- or button-like subterminal palp tarsus).  Leg tarsi usually with tenent hairs on claws or empodium.  Genital papillae absent; males with an intromittent aedeagus.

 

 

Similar taxa.  Linotetranids resemble other elongate tetranychoids associated with grasses such as allochaetophorids (which have eyes) and some tenuipalpids (which lack a thumbclaw process and usually have eyes).

 

Ecology & Distribution.  The Tetranychoidea are plant-associated mites, and includes the infamous spider mites (Tetranychidae).  Tetranychoid species that feed on grasses or pasture legumes may occasionally appear in soil samples.

 

References

Baker EW & Pritchard AE.   1953.  The family categories of tetranychoid mites, with a review of the new families Linotetranidae and Tuckerellidae.  Ann. Entomol. Soc. Amer. 46: 243-258.

Beard JJ & Walter DE. 2004.  Cryptic false spider mites: A review of the family Linotetranidae (Acari: Prostigmata: Tetranychoidea) with descriptions of a new genus, Austrolinus, and 2 new species.  Invert. Syst. 18: 593-606.

Krantz GW.  1978.  A Manual of Acarology.  OSU Bookstores: Corvallis.

Meyer, M.K.P.S. & E.A. Ueckermann 1997. A review of some species of the families Allochaetophoridae, Linotetranidae and Tuckerellidae (Acari: Tetranychoidea). International Journal of Acarology 23: 67–92..