First record of Steatonyssus noctulus Rybin, 1992 in Central Europe (Acari, Mesostigmata, Macronyssidae) Doris Rupp & Peter Ludwig Rupp, D. & Ludwig, P. (2000): First record of Steatonyssus noctulus Rybin, 1992 in Central Europe (Acari, Mesostigmata, Macronyssidae). -Spixiana 23/3: 275-278 The bat parasitizing mite Steatonyssus noctulus is recorded for the first time in Germany. The mite was found in Bavaria on its specific host Nyctalus noctula. This is the first record outside of the former USSR. A brief redescription of S. noctulus is given, which makes it possible to distinguish this species from S. spinosus and S. periblepharus, the two other common species of the genus Steatonyssus frequently found on bats in Germany. Further S. noctulus appears together with Macronyssus flavus on Nyctalus noctula. Females of Steatonyssus can be characterised according to the length of Mll, which in S. noctulus is as long as D5-7, in S. spinosus a little bit shorter than D5-7 and in S. periblepharus very short. All collected mites have been deposited in the collection of the Zoologische Staatssammlung München (ZSM). Doris Rupp, Gailkircher Str. 7, 81247 München, Germany Peter Ludwig, Zoologisches Institut der LMU, Luisenstr. 14, 80333 München, Germany Introduction Steatonyssus Kolenati, 1858 is the most speciose genus of the family Macronyssidae. The genus is widely distributed throughout the world, occupying all zoogeographical regions. These mites are parasites of small mammals, especially bats (Micherdzinski 1980). Many of the bat parasitizing species are host specific, but others appear to parasitize multiple hosts (Radovsky 1967, Micherdzinski 1980, Schmidt 1987, Kulzer 1998). An example is Steatonyssus spinosus, which is reported to live on 16 species of bats, including Nyctalus noctula (Radovsky 1967, Schmidt 1987, Stanyukovich 1997). The present study did not locate S. spinosus on Nyctalus noctula in Germany. However, the closely related species S. noctulus was located. This finding represents the first record of S. noctulus outside of the former USSR (Russia, Latvia, Belorussia, Moldava, Ukraine, Azerbaidjan, Kazachstan, Kirgizstan) (Stanyukovich 1997). As the name implies, S. noctulus is strongly associated with the bat Nyctalus noctula, but also described from Miniopterus schreibersi (Stanyukovich 1997). In the present communi-cation scanning electron microscopic illustrations and a diagiiosis together with S. spinosus is presented to facilitate its determination. Materials and methods Parasites were collected from living bats with the help of authorised persons. After inspection, all bats were returned to their roosts. Dead, injured or exhausted bats living in the care of humans were also examined. The für and patagium of more than 1122 bats (more than 780 living and 342 dead bats) of 23 species was investigated thoroughly on the occurence of parasites. The collected mites were 275
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