Two New Species of Water Mites Discovered in South Korea and the Russian Far East
Posted on May 15, 2013
Two new species of water mites, Torrenticola kimichungi and Monatractides abei, have been discovered in South Korea and the Russian Far East. The image above shows one of the newly discovered water mite species Torrenticola kimichungi.
The water mites were collected by using a hand-pump and hand netting. The pumped samples were filtered through the netting and then fixed in 70 % ethanol for further examination in the laboratory under a stereo microscope.
Vladimir Pesic, Department of Biology, University of Montenegro, lead author of the study, said in a statement, "Water mites are a diverse and widespread but still neglected group of freshwater fauna. In natural streams, species diversity of water mites is generally rather high and may reach, or occasionally even exceed, 50 species at single collecting site, often most of these are torrenticolid mites. Torrenticolid mites avoid habitats with silty substrata and intermittent flow, and their study can give valuable information on the ecological characteristics of the areas with an unstable surface water regime."
The study was published here in the journal Zookeys.