Bee Mites : Acari : Acariformes : Trombidiformes : Erythraeidae
Genus Leptus Latreille, 1796
Leptus Latreille, 1796: 177 (type species "Acarus Phalangii Gée. Fab" (=Leptus phalangii (De Geer, 1778)) by monotypy) (for synonymy and discussion about the type species designation see Southcott, 1961 and 1992)
Type speices Acarus phalangii De Geer, 1778 by monotypy (recently redescribed by Mąkol et al., 2011)
Notes. Vercammen-Grandjean (1973) wrongly cites the year of the original proposal of Leptus as 1756.
Species associated with bees.
Biology. Larvae of Leptus are known to parasitize different terrestrial arthropods. Two described species of this large genus occur on bees: Leptus ariel Southcott, 1989 was found on the European honey bee in Guatemala. Leptus monteithi Southcott, 1993 was described from a colletid bee Leioproctus sp. (Hymenoptera: Colletidae) from Australia (Tasmania) (Southcott, 1993) . Unidentified species were reported from the European honeybee in Peru (Cerro de Pasco) and Colombia (Fletchtmann, 1980; Losada, 1947; Southcott, 1989; 1993), and the USA (Wilson et al., 1990).
References
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B. OConnor and P. Klimov ©
Created: April 27, 2012
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