S. Mahunka szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 56. (Budapest, 1995)

the basis of this morphological summary. After the technical information, the author introduces his taxonomical system. The determination can be carried out on the basis of the given identification key, and the fauna of the given regions is presented in the detailed diagnoses. The keys are well edited, straightforward and simple, sometimes maybe a bit oversimplified. To the best of my knowledge the separation of species based only on one distinguishing character is often misleading. Fortunately the given figures, all of them prepared by the author himself, are always very informative and help the identification of the species. Unfortunately, the author did not give a high number of these figures, he had better gave a dorsal and a ventral view in all of the cases, and sometimes some additional details. A more detailed synonym list is also missing, but it might be due to the restrictions of the Fauna Iberica series itself, and in his former publications the author gave complete synonym lists. This is particularly important because of the numerous and taxonomically problematic Michelcic species. Their taxonomic revision is one of the most valuable achievements of this book. This is a thorough, mature work, which not only gives a firm basis to the determination of the Iberian Oribatid fauna, but also a great advance from the point of view of Oribatid research in general. Pavlitshenko, P. G. (1994): A guide to the Ceratozetoid mites (Oribatei, Ceratozetoidea) of Ukraine. Kiev, 1994. pp. 144. Pavlitshenko, P. G. belongs to the young generation of oribatologists, he publishes since 1991. In spite of the short period of time several interesting and valuable papers were written by him, all of them dealing with Ceratozetoid mites. His present book is a synthesis of his results in this topic, basically a series of faunistic works, a hybrid of an identification book and a monograph. I myself like this combination very much. The work begins with a very detailed, thorough methodological and morphological introduction, and the parts discussing ecological requirements, habitat selection and distribution are also very useful. The identification keys are straightforward, well edited, the diagnoses and additional descriptions are also very reliable. A further stronghold of this book is that the author gives a figure (sometimes figures) of all the mentioned species. The figures, prepared by the author himself, concentrate on the important diagnostic, features, and are extremely helpful for the readers. The shortcomings of the book probably stem from the fact that the author started to deal with the taxonomy of this group fairly short time ago. For example, it is almost certainly sure that there are considerably more Ceratozetoid Oribatids in Ukraine then mentioned in this book. Maybe it would have been better to wait for one or two years before the publication. The other problem is that the author set up new supraspecific taxa without enough reason. For example in my opinion neither the Ceresellidae family nor the Xiphobates genus deserve its rank, at least not on the basis of the presented distinguishing characters. The Vicinebates genus is a synonym (correctly: Trichoribatella Mahunka, 1983, although its separation from the Latilamellobates Shaldybina, 1971 genus requires further research).