Thinoseius spinosus (Willmann, 1939)

Thinoseius spinosus (Willmann, 1939)

A Holarctic littoral species. Its records at distances of dozens or hundreds of kilometers away from a sea coast are of special interest. These are records at chicken farms in Oregon, USA ( Volkinburg 1969), as well as on the shores of salt lakes in the south of Western Siberia (GenBank ID: MW367935) and in northern Dagestan, North Caucasus (O.L.M.: personal observation). Generally, T. spinosus seems to be the “northernmost” representative of the littoral acarofauna;

it lives on Spitsbergen ( Gwiazdowicz and Coulson 2010), northern Greenland ( Makarova 2015), northern Novaya Zemlya and northern Chukotka (O.L.M.: personal observations). There is no information on nutrition, but for other species of the genus active consumption of nematodes was revealed ( Egglishaw 1966 ; Rigby 1996a), as well as eating crushed enchytraeids, small dipterans and amphipods ( Avdonin 1999, 2002). Deutonymphs of T. spinosus are actively dispersed when attached to various brachiceran dipterans, Anthomyiidae , Calliphoridae , Coelopidae , Helomyzidae , Heterocheilidae , Sphaeroceridae ( Lindroth et al. 1973 ; Klimov

1998; Makarova and Böcher 2009 ; Gwiazdowicz and Coulson 2010).