Phthiracarus italicus (Oudemans, 1900)

Hoploderma italicum Oudemans, 1900b, p. 170.

Hoplophora dasypus, Berlese, 1883a, fasc. 6 (4).

Hoploderma italicum Oudemans, 1915, p. 216.

Berlese considered material from North Italy identical with Oribates dasypus Duges (1834), a species of uncertain identity. Oudemans placed dasypus in the synonymy of Acarus piger Scopoli (1763), a species of which even the relation to a family is unknown. Because Berlese's dasypus is not identical with the species that Oudemans identified as " piger (= dasypus)", Oudemans gave the name italicus to dasypus sensu Berlese.

In a previous paper (Van der Hammen, 1952) I noted already that Oudemans's own italicus material is heterogeneous. One of his specimens possibly represents the same species as mentioned by Willmann (1931, p. 193) sub P. italicus; it may be testudineus (C. L. Koch, 1841) sensu Jacot (1936, p. 170, figs. 7-12).

Berlese's dasypus resembles testudineus indeed, but the recorded length (1 mm) does not fit in with this species.

I have seen one slide (no. 31/22) in the Berlese Collection, which according to the label contains Tritia reticulata, Phtiracarus magnus, and Phtiracarus dasypus (locality: Tiarno). Apart from Pseudotritia reticulata the slides appeared to contain two species that are probably Phthiracarus laevigatus (C. L. Koch) and Steganacarus applicatus (Sellnick); I do not know which of these two species was identified by Berlese as dasypus but at any rate they do not represent the figured specimen.

It will be useful to designate a specimen of testudineus or a related species from the type-locality as neotype of P. italicus; in this way italicus becomes either a synonym or the name of a good species.