Notes on mange mites of the genus Notoedres (Acarina: Sarcoptidae) from mammals of eastern Asia, with a description of four new species.

Three new species of Notoedres, N. longisetosus, N. alexfaini, and A. rajamanickami, are described from the hairless bat of SE Asia, Cheiromeles torquatus. This brings to 5 the known number of Notoedres spp. from this bat. A new species of Notoedres, N. pseudomuris, is described from a mouse, 'This work was supported by the University of California International Center for Medical Research and Training (UC ICMRT, Hooper Foundation, San Francisco School of Medicine) with research grant TW 00144 from the Office of International Research, National Institutes of Health, U. S. Public. Health Service. "From the George Williams Hooper Foundation, University of California Medical Center, San Francisco. Present address: Department of Veterinary Microbiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA. Mus formosanus, captured in Taiwan. The animal from which the mites were collected had a severe form of mange. The genus Notoedres is recorded for the first time from an insectivore. The genus Notoedres Railliet, 1893 has been the subject of several recent studies, notably by myself (1964) and by Fain (1965). Some 25 species have now been described, the host list including bats, rodents, carnivores, and 1 primate. Although the host range appears to be relatively extensive, most forms described have been from bats and rodents. Only 1 species, N. cati Hering, 1893, is found on carnivores and 1, N. galagoensis Fain, 1963, on a primate. 314 J. Med. Ent. Vol. 5, no. 3 The 17 species of Notoedres described from bats are restricted to 3 families of Microchiroptera— Vespertilionidae, Molossidae, and Emballonuridae. The absence of notoedrids from the Megachiroptera is curious but is probably more apparent than real since only a small fraction of the chiropteran fauna of the world has been adequately studied by parasitologists. So far as rodents are concerned, 5 species have been described from murids, including Notoedres muris Megnin, 1877, the well known parasite of the brown and the black rats. Two species are known from Sciuromorphs, 1 of which may be either a subspecies or a synonym of the other. The purpose of this paper is to describe 4 new species of Notoedres from a bat and a rodent and to record, for the first time, a species of this genus from an insectivore. Of the 4 new notoedrids 3 were collected from specimens of the molossid bat, Cheiromeles torquatus Horsfield, taken in Malaya (Bukit Lagong Forest Reserve, Selangor) and in Singapore. The bats from Selangor were captured as they emerged from a felled, hollow tree trunk in the Forest Reserve. Those from Singapore were removed from a cupboard in a house in the city, where they had taken refuge. The fourth new species was obtained from skin scrapings of a mouse, Mus formosanus Kuroda, trapped in Taiwan by Dr E. W. Jameson. The material from the insectivore, Crocidura fulginosa Blyth, may represent a new form of Notoedres close to N. muris, but, since the collection is limited to 6 imperfect specimens, the advisability of describing the mite at this time is questionable. The system of chaetotaxic nomenclature employed in this paper is that introduced by Fain (1963) for psoroptid mites and subsequently applied to the genus Notoedres (Fain 1965). All the mites were cleared in lactophenol (3:1) and mounted in de Faure's gum-chloral mountant. The holotypes are deposited in the B. P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii and the paratypes in the acarological collection of the University of California Entomological Museum at Davis. DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW SPECIES Notoedres longisetosus Lavoipierre n. sp.