Licneremaeus prodigiosus Schuster, 1958

Schatz, Heinrich, Fortini, Lorenzo, Fusco, Tommaso, Casale, Francesca, Jacomini, Carlo & Giulio, Andrea Di, 2021, Oribatid mites (Acari, Oribatida) from “ Parco Naturale delle Alpi Marittime ” (Piedmont, Italy), Zootaxa 5082 (6), pp. 501-540 : 525

Licneremaeus prodigiosus Schuster, 1958

Licneremaeus prodigiosus Schuster 1958, p. 223 , fig. 1.

Parco Naturale delle Alpi Marittime: PAL, PRATO single records.

General distribution: Austrian Alps; Central, South, South-East Europe; southwestern Palaearctic; Mediterranean. New record for Italy.

Habitat preferences: silvicolous; xerophilous.

Remarks: Body length 180–200 µm. A comparison with material from the “Hundsheimer Berge” (Lower

Austria, near the site of the original description, Schatz & Fischer 2007) exhibits the species identity of the specimens from Cuneo. Licneremaeus giustii Bernini, 1973 , known from the Eolian Islands, southern Italy, is morphologically very similar, especially in the pattern of the notogastral areolae. Morphological differences between L. prodigiosus and L. giustii are given in the posterior arrangement of these areolae, also in the number of notogastral setae (12 pairs in L. prodigiosus , 13 pairs in L. giustii ), and in the length of the adanal setae

(very short in L. prodigiosus , longer in L. giustii ) ( Bernini 1973). The specimens from Cuneo correspond in all mentioned features to L. prodigiosus , although the notogastral areolae are weakly expressed in the present specimens.