FALL NUMBER 21 
THE GENERIC AND SPECIFIC NAME OF THE ORANGE 
RUST MITE 
Some confusion has arisen in regard to the proper generic 
name for the orange rust mite and also the proper spelling of 
its specific name. 
The generic name Typhlodromus under which the mite was 
originally described does not appear in recent literature on the 
gall mites and is not mentioned in either Nalepa’s 1898 mono- 
graph of this group or in his extensive 1911 monograph. This 
genus was established by Scheuten in 1857 for the pear leaf 
blister mite, now known as Evriophyes piri (Pgst.). In Scheu- 
ten’s paper the name of his proposed genus is neither set off 
by a center heading or a paragraph heading, hence has undoubt- 
edly been overlooked by most entomologists. Being monobasic 
and having Eriophyes piri (Pgst.) as a type, the genus is evi- 
dently only a synonym of Phytoptus Dujardin (1851), which in 
turn is a synonym of Hriophyes Siebold (1851). 
Notwithstanding the fact that the orange rust mite clearly 
belongs to the genus Phyllocoptes, which genus was established 
by Nalepa in 1889, it is sometimes mentioned as being an 
Eriophyes, if perchance neither of the two untenable names, 
Typhlodromus or Phytoptus, are used. The reason for this is 
not hard to find. The drawing of this species given by Hubbard 
many years ago, which drawing frequentily has been copied in 
more recent years and which is the only drawing of this mite 
with which most entomologists are familiar, actually represents 
the species as being an Hriophyes!, 7. e., all of the abdominal 
rings are shown as being complete rings, whereas in reality half 
of them are only half rings. 
The proper genus for this mite is clearly Phyllocoptes Nalepa. 
The spelling of the specific name of this mite also varies. In 
accumulated notes and papers it has been spelled oliioorus, olei- 
vorus, oilivorus and oil-livorus. The first mentioned is the spell- 
ing under which the species was described. Evidently it was 
badly garbled either in manuscript or in the printing of the 
same. In Ashmead’s notes accompanying the original description 
of the mite mention is made of its feeding on the oil of the 
orange, hence the supposition has been that he intended to 
indicate this fact in the name proposed. All of the renderings of 
the name, other than the original spelling, seem to indicate this 
