@dragonwysper submitted: Gonna share some mites because I’m an Acari fanatic. I already know the families (and some genera) of these, so no need for ID! I just wanted to share some of what are objectively the Best Creatures ™. All of these are from the [[removed]]* area of Missouri!
*please redact
A Rhagidiidae I found under a log! Very speedy creechur. It was hard to get photos of him haha!
Balaustium sp.! Sidewalk mites! They’re very goofy. I’ve found that if you lightly touch them, they will zip away from you, while spinning to face whatever you’ve touched them with. I have no idea why they do this, though I’ve considered it may be related to a substance they’ve been found to secrete when distressed.
Big Trombidium sp. in a pill bottle (because that’s what I had at the time haha. The perks of being mentally ill…). I released this guy after taking some photos, and then was contacted by Ray Fisher (an American acarologist), who asked if I would be willing to send him over for study. I went back out to refind this guy (which, by the way, is ridiculously hard to do with a mite in a woodpile). I did find him again, and sent him over to Fisher! I still send him specimens from time to time, as he’s working on reorganizing the Trombidiform taxon! I have a potential opportunity to get to name a new species with this (since American mites are severely understudied and everything I’ve sent in is an undescribed species), and I’m overall just really excited to be working with him!
A Trombidium sp. on my hand! They’re so large for mites!
A Trombidiform of some kind in a log crevice! I really like this guy’s little white legs haha.
Same guy from above with a fellow Trombidiform (Trombidium sp.)!
Trombidium sp. belly!! I took a lot of photos of the ventral sides of these mites. They have two major openings (aside from the mouth): the genital plate and the anus. The genital plate is the little mitussy in the center of this guy’s belly, and the anus is at the end of his abdomen (right in the middle of his little mite cheeks)!
Trombidium sp. in the wild. It’s so fucking funny to me how BRIGHT they are. He looks so out of place in the grass, but he’s supposed to be here, and it’s just 😭😭
Fun story with this little Trombidium sp.! So I had a lightning bug in a container (for a miscellaneous mite project), and found a tiny little pupa in there after a couple days! I texted Fisher and was like “👀 what is he,” and he told me it was a Trombidium that had been parasitizing the lightning bug! So, with his instruction, I took the little guy out of the tank and put him in a separate pill bottle to wait for him to emerge. He did after about a week or two, into a smaller version of the mites I see outside! I’ve currently got him in a really tiny bioactive terrarium. I need to send him to Fisher, but I’m lazy and haven’t gotten around to it yet haha.
This little mite will routinely burrow down in the dirt and stay hidden in there for a couple weeks at a time, before randomly popping up to wander about on the surface. He’s made me worry he was dead more than once. But he always turns up! Absolute goober. I feel obligated to name him, but I haven’t gotten around to that either.
Image shows the lad on a carrot shaving, which is in there as food for the springtails and isopods!
And!! Last but not least, a young tick! I don’t actually know what kind of tick this guy is. He’s probably a Lone Star (Amblyomma americanum) because we have a lot of those around here, but I don’t know for sure haha. If you do, feel free to ID him for me!
So this guy is included because he is a mite! Ticks are usually separated from other mites based on an arbitrary categorization of shielded or thick-skinned vertebrate parasites versus everything else, but they are very much in the Acari subclass! They make up two families in the Parasitiform order, Ixodidae (hard ticks) and Argasidae (soft ticks). Ixodidae, a large order of about 17 genera, are what you see in North America and Europe, while Argasidae, made up of 5 accepted genera, are more common in South Asia.
Since they’re very much mites, they also deserve appreciation because they are wonderful and beautiful and fascinating.
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Please let me know if you want me to send you more mite rambles, because Acari are my biggest hyperfixation at the moment and I love talking about them ❤️
MITE TIME!!!! Oh boy I love mites and they are severely underrated. This is an excellent collection of lads. I don’t wanna play favorites but that first dude has VERY silly legs and I love him deeply 🥺 But I also love the parasitic dude you found in the firefly container. I’ve definitely seen juvenile mites attached to bugs, so it’s fun to find one who had dropped off! Name suggestion: Goober.
PLEASE let me know if you get to name a species, that would be very exciting.
I agree ticks are wonderful and fascinating! Your little pal looks like Amblyomma sp., which would include the lone star tick so that’s more likely since they’re very common in your area. But there’s also the golf coast tick in the same genus that’s found in your area, too, and I wouldn’t know how to differentiate them as juveniles.
Feel free to share mite photos any time you like! Although I will say just a few photos per submission tends to be easier for people to read/reblog! Lots of people will block very long posts or not bother looking at them at all.
Btw dying at “mitussy” omg