THE COLLEMBOLA OF LEBANON 
AND WESTERN SYRIA. PART I. 
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS AND 
THE FAMILY ONYCHTURIDAE 
By K. Christiansen 
Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa 
The Collembolan fauna of the eastern end of the Medi- 
terranean is still very poorly known. Brown (1926) 
made the first major contribution by describing twelve 
species taken by Buxton and Evans in the region of 
Amara and Baghdad in Iraq. Handschin (1942) recorded 
all but one of these species from Palestine, and added 26 
additional forms. In his recent paper upon the Collembola 
taken during a speleological expedition in Lebanon, Cas- 
sagnau (1951) added 25 new forms to this list. In ad- 
dition to these major works a number of smaller papers 
have been published upon new material or further records. 
The series of papers, of which this is the first, will 
constitute a description of over 80 species collected from 
Lebanon and Western Syria. More than 35 are new to 
science or new records for the Near East. Collections 
upon which this study was based were made from over 
100 localities including most of the major habitats of the 
region. Caves were poorly represented, but these have 
already been extensively investigated by Cassagnau (op. 
cit.) . 
Acknowledgements 
The material described in these papers was collected 
during my three-year stay at the American University 
of Beirut, and I wish to thank the staff of that organiza- 
tion for their financial aid and encouragement in the 
completion of the project. The collecting, handling, and 
sorting of material was greatly aided by a number of 
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