Two feather mite species (Alloptidae, Freyanidae) associated with the Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis (Rothschild, 1893) (Diomedeidae) from Japanese coastal waters

Abstract

The Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis (Rothschild, 1893) is a seabird species included in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature as Near Threatened (NT). We sampled two feather mite species, Diomedacarus gigas (Dubinin, 1949) and Echinacarus petaliferus (Trouessart, 1898), from the three albatross, and provided their redescriptions. This is the first record of D. gigas from the past half-century in Japan and the first report of E. petaliferus in this country. The haplotype network of partial sequences of cytochrome oxidase subunit for D. gigas showed that six of the seven haplotypes were unique to the mites sampled from each host individual. This mite species may have a very little opportunity for horizontal transmission between host individuals since albatrosses live alone over sea areas, except the breeding period on land.