A new species of the genus Gaeolaelaps Evans & Till (Acari: Mesostigmata: Laelapidae) from China

As members of the family Laelapidae, Gaeolaelaps species are generally acknowledged from litter and edaphic habitats (Joharchi 2019; 2022). The taxonomic history of Gaeolaelaps is complicated and long-term (Halliday & Lindquist 2007). Gaeolaelaps was first defined by Evans and Till (1966) and used to be a subgenus of Hypoaspis (Halliday & Lindquist 2007; Beaulieu 2009). Prior to this paper, the genus Gaeolaelaps consisted of more than 120 described species (Nemati & Mohseni 2013; Kazemi 2020), with 20 species reported from China (Yan et al. 2018). Herein, a new species of Gaeolaelaps Evans & Till, 1966, Gaeolaelaps sp. nov. is described from adult females collected in soil under the Osmanthus trees in Jiangxi Province, China.