Abstract
Members of the oribatid mite family Peloppiidae are found throughout the Holarctic in subarctic and arctic habitats, and temperate and boreal forests, and while common, are rarely collected in high abundance. Pacific Northwest forest habitats of western Canada have high relative diversity of peloppiid mites representing species of the genera Ceratoppia, Dendrozetes, and Metrioppia. Many of these are newly described species that are seemingly endemic to the region. Here I review the status and diversity of Peloppiidae from North America, and summarize the distributions of described species. Despite recent efforts, significant work remains. Within Ceratoppia two widely-distributed and established species have considerable morphological variation, while the type specimens are missing or destroyed, making confirmation of new specimens difficult. For other genera, extensive review of the Canadian National Collections in Ottawa, Canada suggest there are at least four undescribed species of North American Peloppiidae - two potentially new species of Paenoppia, and new species each of Parapyroppia and Pyroppia.
Highlights
The Peloppiidae are a family of non-poronotic brachypyline oribatid mites that consist of almost 80 species in 22 genera worldwide (Norton and Behan-Pelletier 2009); the family is recorded from arctic to tropical regions around the world
Behan-Pelletier (1999) noted that none of the North American high arctic oribatid mites are endemic to the area having Holarctic, or Beringian (Behan-Pelletier 1997), distributions
The Beringia land bridge was an important source of colonisation events for many mobile species, but the area housed significant glacial refugia in the northwest of the main Canadian ice sheet
Summary
The Peloppiidae are a family of non-poronotic brachypyline oribatid mites that consist of almost 80 species in 22 genera worldwide (Norton and Behan-Pelletier 2009); the family is recorded from arctic to tropical regions around the world. The second most diverse is Metrioppia with eight described species worldwide and four in North America (Lindo 2015). The characters that are used to differentiate genera of Peloppiidae include a combination of cheliceral form (chelate-dentate or pelopsiform), the shape of the lamellae and length of lamellar cusps, the conspicuousness of a straight sejugal apodeme, and pretarsus claw number (Norton and Behan-Pelletier 2009).
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