Species Composition of Parasitic Mites of the Subfamily Picobiinae (Acariformes: Syringophilidae) Associated with African Barbets (Piciformes: Lybiidae) †

SIMPLE SUMMARY: This study investigated the picobiine mites parasitising African barbets. The results showed that this bird family is more widely infested by feather mites than previously thought, with three species of the genus Tanopicobia found on ten African barbet species. Birds belonging to the family Lybiidae have a unique parasite fauna consisting exclusively of mites from the genus Tanopicobia, which is restricted solely to African barbets. Based on the distribution of the genus Tanopicobia on the studied barbet hosts, our results also provide indirect cues that the host genus Trachyphonus, attributed to such different avian families, e.g., Capitonidae, Ramphastidae, is part of the family Lybiidae, whereas other/related bird families have their own distinct quill mite fauna. ABSTRACT: In this study, we conducted a parasitological investigation of the quill mite fauna of the subfamily Picobiinae (Acariformes: Prostigmata: Syringophilidae) associated with African barbets (Aves: Piciformes: Lybiidae). We examined twenty-seven host species, representing 57% of the forty-seven known host species in the family Lybiidae, belonging to seven genera (70% of the ten genera in the family). Our research revealed that ten host species were infested by three species of picobiine mites belonging to the genus Tanopicobia: (1) Tanopicobia hallae Sikora and Skoracki, sp. n., from three species of the genus Lybius and two species of the genus Tricholaema, (2) Tanopicobia stactolaema Sikora and Skoracki, sp. n., from two species of the genus Stactolaema, and (3) Tanopicobia trachyphoni Skoracki et al., 2020, collected from three host species of the genus Trachyphonus. Our findings demonstrate that birds belonging to the family Lybiidae have a specific parasite fauna consisting exclusively of mites of the genus Tanopicobia; this mite genus is apparently restricted to African barbets.