PHYTOSEIIDAE (ACARI: PARASITIFORMES) OF SICILY (ITALY): SPECIES DIVERSITY AFTER HALF A CENTURY OF SURVEYS

Phytoseiid mites became an interesting issue in Sicily in the early 70’s. Constant surveys enriched theknowledge on Sicilian fauna with 48 valid species, five of them new to Science. In the present paper we summarisedata collected in about 50 years of surveys, adding 12 records new for the Sicily fauna. Typhlodromus (Anthoseius)cryptus Athias-Henriot has been confirmed as the most frequent species (39.4%), followed by Typhlodromus (Typhlodromus)exhilaratus Ragusa (32.6%), Kampimodromus aberrans (Oudemans) (22.9%), Typhlodromus (Anthoseius)rhenanoides Athias-Henriot (19.4%) (19.6%) and Euseius stipulatus (Athias-Henriot) (18.9%). Some speciesshowed a strict association with warmer or cooler sites, while others showed a wider distribution. Sorensen-Diceindices showed higher values between contiguous localities for altitude (0.65 and 0.60 for hill-mountain and plainhillsites respectively), while the similarity among Phytoseiidae fauna present on plants in areas far from eachother (plain-mountain) was lower (0.53).