Dolichodectes Park and Atyeo, 1971

Mironov, Sergey, Literak, Ivan, Hung, Nguyen Manh & Capek, Miroslav, 2012, New feather mites of the subfamily Pterodectinae (Acari: Proctophyllodidae) from passerines and woodpeckers (Aves: Passeriformes and Piciformes) in Vietnam, Zootaxa 3440, pp. 1-49 : 26

Genus Dolichodectes Park and Atyeo, 1971

Type species: Proctophyllodes (Pterocolus) edwardsi Trouessart, 1885 by original designation.

The genus Dolichodectes was established in the course of revising the subfamily Pterodectinae and it currently includes seven species (Park & Atyeo 1971; Mironov & Fain 2003; Mironov 2008; Mironov et al. 2010). Within the Montesauria generic complex, the genus Dolichodectes (derived taxon) is characterized by significantly elongated opisthosoma in males with setae ps3 situated posterior to the anal suckers and bases of setae g and ps3 arranged in a long rectangle.

Representatives of this genus have been recorded from a wide diversity of passerine families of the Old World: Acrocephalidae , Platysteiridae (Sylvioidea) , Muscicapidae , Turdidae (Muscicapoidea) , Ploceidae (Passeroidea) and Monarchidae (Corvoidea) . Of seven species included in this genus, the type species D. edwardsi (Trouessart, 1885) , associated with warblers of the genera Acrocephalus Naumann and Naumann and Phylloscopus Boie , is widely distributed in the Old World, while six other species have been recorded only from Africa (Trouessart 1885; Gaud & Mouchet 1957; Gaud & Till 1961; Mironov 1996; Mironov et al. 2010). Hernandes and Valim (2006) for the first time constructed a key to known Dolichodectes species and also described D. neotropicus Hernandes and Valim, 2006 from a cotingid host in Brazil. Further study of these authors ( Valim & Hernandes 2009) showed that this species actually belongs to the Pterodectes complex, rather than to the Montesauria complex, and this species was removed to a separate genus Berladectes Valim and Hernandes, 2009.