A check-list of British Marine Halacaridae (Acari), with notes on two species of the sub-family Rhombognathinae

Mites of the family Halacaridae are abundant on the sea shore, and in the sea down to considerable depths. Their identification is not an easy matter; there is no one account which can be used to identify all the British species, and the use of any one of the general accounts of European species, such as André (1946) or Viets (1936), by itself might easily lead to misidentification.The purpose of the present list is to record the species which have so far been found around the British Isles, and to indicate sources of reliable descriptions of each species. A list of the British species of this family was given in a general list of British Acari by Turk (1953), and this has provided the starting point for the present list; no reference to occurrence in Britain before Turk's list is given, apart from one by Halbert (1920) which was left out by Turk. Twelve of the thirty-six species in the present list were not recorded by Turk. One species, Halacarus zosterae (Fab.), recorded by Turk has been omitted because the original description is quite inadequate to decide even which genus the creature should belong to. Eight species are known from British fresh water; these have not been included in the present list.