Chamobatidae Grandjean, 1954

The adults are usually small, but some are medium sized (290–700 µm long), and all species are brown. A pair of thin lamellae is situated laterally on the prodorsum, while the lamellar cusps and the translamella are absent. There is a pair of immovable pteromorphs, that are wing-like structures, on the notogaster. The notogaster has 10 pairs of setae, which are usually small or vestigial, and 4 pairs of porose areas (Weigmann 2006, Norton and Behan-Pelletier 2009, Behan-Pelletier and Lindo 2023).

Chamobatidae species live in forest soil and litter, in mosses, wood, lichens, in peatlands, grasslands, heathlands and in sand dunes. They are primarily feeding on fungi and secondarily on decomposing plant matter (Weigmann 2006, Behan-Pelletier and Lindo 2023). Chamobatidae species reproduce sexually (Maraun et al. 2019).

The development of one of the species, Chamobates cuspidatus (Michael, 1884), was studied in the field in Denmark and the time from egg to egg lasted one year (Luxton 1981). Two other species, Chamobates rastratus (Hull, 1914) (mentioned as Chamobates spinosus Sellnick, 1928) and Chamobates subglobulus (Oudemans, 1900), were studied in the laboratory, and the time of development from egg to adult varied from 44 days (temperature not given) to 124 days at 18–20 °C (Grishina 1991, Pfingstl and Schatz 2021).