Fight footage: upside-down flip!
#bugstodon #MiteMonday #RedVelvetMites #MiteBehaviour #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Trombidiidae
#MiteMonday: paid an impromptu visit to my usual mite tree down by the lake! Things are busy. Saw some fighting, although much of it was over food (dead bugs).
These are sumo mites (_Allothrombium_), in the red velvet mite family (a Trombidiidae).
#bugstodon #Mitestodon #RedVelvetMites #MiteBehaviour #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Trombidiidae
Since the previous post is doing numbers*, here's a very brief scuffle which is the best I was able to capture.
For those who haven't read the classic 1960 paper ( 
https://doi.org/10.4039/Ent92898-12, 
https://sci-hub.box/10.4039/Ent92898-12 )—I do not know whether this is the same species, but the behaviour is similar enough—a male stakes out a patch on some surface a few centimetres square and patrols it, drumming on the ground with his front legs. Other males wander in and if they manage to locate each other (they seem quite blind and basically need to run into each other), they fight one-on-one; the "defender" (my term) doesn't follow them far beyond his patch. At some point he decides to deposit a spermatophore on the ground. Females (who are noticeably larger and fatter) do not seem to concern themselves with the whole thing; they may be nearby, or not. An interested female and male walk round each other in circles tapping each other, and presumably after a while she may pick up the spermatophore to fertilize her eggs. More than this, I don't know.
* "numbers": more than 1 boost and 2 likes
#DailyMiteVid #Mitestodon #mites #RedVelvetMites #SumoMites #MiteBehaviour #Acari #Acariformes #Trombidiidae
Mite fight!
#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #mites #RedVelvetMites #SumoMites #MiteBehaviour #Acari #Acariformes #Trombidiidae
From yesterday: all species I've really only found on/immediately near those tall pine trees with red bark. The pretty yellow/gold/silver jumping spider _Eris floridana_; a tiny _Admestina_ jumping spider with a flattened, speckled body; and a mite from the family Erythracaridae (I'm calling it, I feel pretty sure).
I have found these even in rather bare, shabby, pissed-in areas that get a lot of human foot traffic, normally not a great place to find bugs!
Another kind of arachnid that seems to like the pine trees are opilionids, in the fall when they get big and mate.
#DailySpiderPic #DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #spiders #JumpingSpiders #mites #Araneae #Salticidae #Acari #Acariformes #Erythracaridae
#MiteMonday: A delightful surprise at the pines at the very southeast corner of Trinity-Bellwoods! These spiky little anystoid mites, which I *suspect* are Erythracaridae, were racing up and down the trunks and hiding under the edges of the flakes of bark.
(These chunky pines—not white pine; red pine or jack pine or something like that—have bark with large flat flakes, unlike the more open and vertical furrows in the bark of willows, oak, etc. There are certain arachnids that seem to be particularly associated with these pines, like _Eris floridana_, _Tutelina harti_, and Opiliones when they are very big, and I guess the microhabitats formed by the bark may be why.)
#bugstodon #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Anystoidea #Erythracaridae
The triumphant return of #MiteMonday!
Spotted this unusually reddish penthaleid mite on a decaying tree stump. Note the small pale #DorsalAnus on its back towards the rear of the abdomen.
#bugstodon #Mitestodon #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Penthaleidae
Still the depths of winter here. I have been having dreams about bugs. I recently had a dream about finding plump whirligig mites everywhere: some their usual orange-red, others greenish because they had just eaten something green…I miss the mites.
Here are some whirligig mites I found a couple of years ago on a rock down by the lake, fighting over a dead midge. #iNaturalist observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/225382565 
#MiteMonday #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #Acariformes #Anystidae
#Mouthparts in #mites of the #Acariformes are usually normal shaped as typical for #arachnids. The #chelicerae are the feeding organs consisting of digitus fixus and d. mobilis. #Pedipalps have sensing functions with different kinds of #sensoryorgans. In #Histiostomatidae (#Astigmata) the whole #gnathosoma is modified into a complex #filterfeeding organ that creates an #underpressure on #food surfaces.
© #StefanFWirth Berlin 2026
Reference
S. F. Wirth (2023)
https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/GSP/GSOIL4N/GSOIL4N-Posters/ID_167.pdf
Been a long time since I posted anything for #MiteMonday, but I was going through my camera and found this one I don't think I've shared before! Just a good old _Allothrombium_ red velvet mite.
#Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #Acari #Acariformes #Prostigmata #Trombidiidae
neville park
Stefan F. Wirth