Figure 25.

Platypatrobus lacustris Darlington. Described in 1938, this species remained a great rarity for more than 20 years. The few specimens known had all been captured at light. Henri Goulet, then a summer student working at the Biosystematics Research Centre in Ottawa (now part of the Eastern Cereal and Oilseed Research Centre), found out that a mite of the genus Protodinychus, members of which occurred commonly in beaver houses, had been found on one of the specimens of Patrobus lacustris. Armed with this information, Goulet visited an abandoned beaver house in Gatineau Park in southwestern Quebec and found more than 50 specimens of Platypatrobus. The habitat requirements of the species were discovered: Platypatrobus lacustris lives in the walls of active or recently deserted beaver houses.