259 



DESCRIPTION OF A NEW MITE BELONGING TO THE 

 GENUS HETEROPUS, FOUND IN WASPS' NESTS. 



By Walter W. Froggatt. 



When examiuing the contents of the nests of Alastor eriurgus, 

 Sauss., obtained in the neighbourhood of Sydney, I have on several 

 occasions, while breaking up the clay cells, found numbers con- 

 taining dead pupte, which, upon close examination, were found to 

 be covered with small globular yellow excrescences, varying from 

 the size of a pin's point to the size of small shot. Upon first 

 noticing these I took them to be grease or some fatty exudation 

 from the insect, but upon placing them under the lens I was 

 astonished to see that these globular bodies had legs and heads 

 attached to them, which were constantly moving from side to 

 side ; the globular portion in fact being the distended abdomen of 

 the gravid female of some minute carnivorous mite. Besides the 

 mites attached to dead pupse, there were numbers scattered all 

 over the walls of the cell from which they were taken, and among 

 them I noticed several of very difierent form, which I took to be 

 males, though they might possibly be unimpregnated females. 

 Two species of these Acari are known from the nests of bees. 

 Mr. G. Newport (Trans. Linn. Soc. Vol. xxi. tab. 10, p. 95, 1850) 

 described a species he had discovered in the nests of Anthophora 

 retusa feeding upon the larvte ; he placed it in the family Sarcop- 

 tides, forming for its reception the genus Heteropus, giving it the 

 specific name of //. ventricosus. Newport also says that in the 

 genus Trichodactylus, Dufour, the mites are found in the nests of 

 the mason bees (Osmia). 



In the Bulletin Soc. Ent. France, 1868, Lichtenstein described 

 a somewhat similar mite under the name of Physogaster larvarum. 



