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Mites of the family Syringophilidae (Acariformes: Cheyletoidea) are ectoparasites inhabiting the quills of various feather types in many groups of birds. Until now, 334 valid species and 60 genera of quill mites have been described and recorded from 482 bird species (95 families and 24 orders). Currently, the family is divided into 2 subfamilies: Syringophilinae Lavoipierre, 1953 with 260 species grouped in 49 genera, and Picobinae Johnston and Kethley, 1973 with 74 species grouped in 11 genera. Mites of the subfamily Syringophilinae inhabit quills of primaries, secondaries, tertials, rectrices and wing coverts and just occasionally the body feathers; representatives of the subfamily Picobinae live predominantly inside the body feathers. The rapid increase of the knowledge on biodiversity and systematics of quill mites started in end of the 1990s; numerous new descriptions appeared since that time and taxonomic rearrangements make an urgent need to summarize all previous data. We present a complete checklist of the family Syringophilidae of the world including the following data: a species name, author(s), references, a number of first page of description, figure numbers in descriptions, depository of type and non-type materials, host spectrum and geographical distribution. The checklist is additionally provided with the table including bird hosts and associated quill mite species.

The comparative study of ontogeny and morphological structures of quill mite infrapopulations of a newly described species Peristerophila hirundineus sp. nov. from Merops hirundineus (Coraciiformes: Meropidae), collected in Namibia, D.R. Congo, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania, shows evidence of female dimorphism in the genus Peristerophila Kethley, 1970. This proves that females of quill mite species referred to the genus Peristerophila are homeomorph forms, while those referred to the genus Castosyringophilus Bochkov and Perez, 2003 are heteromorph ones. Therefore, the genus Castosyringophilus syn. nov. is synonymized herein with the genus Peristerophila. The following new combinations for mite species formerly referred to Castosyringophilus are proposed: Peristerophila forpi (Bochkov and Perez, 2002) comb. nov., P. claravis (Skoracki and Glowska 2008) comb. nov., and P. meropis (Skoracki, Hromada and Sikora, 2017) comb. nov. The possible evolutionary sense of the female dimorphism in syringophilid mites is discussed.

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Two new quill mite species of the genus Psittaciphilus Fain, Bochkov & Mironov, 2000 (Acariformes: Prostigmata: Syringophilidae) collected from columbiform birds (Columbiformes) are described: Psittaciphilus montanus n. sp. form the ruddy quail-dove Geotrygon montana Gosse from Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil and Panama, and Psittaciphilus patagioenas n. sp. from the band-tailed pigeon Patagioenas fasciata (Say) from Colombia and the scaled pigeon Patagioenas speciosa (Gmelin) from Surinam. A key to the species of the genus Psittaciphilus is provided. Our finding is the first record of the representatives of this genus on columbiform birds.