#MiteMonday: a red velvet mite (_Allothrombium_) sneakily snacks on midges from a spider's web. I also saw a red-winged blackbird eating a midge-filled spiderweb, too. At this time of year, the few spiders that overwintered catch so many midges that their webs almost collapse under the weight—more than they could possibly eat. I wonder how much midge biomass these spiders inadvertently make available to other animals!

#MiteMonday: it's that time of year again! A sheet-web weaver's web in a willow tree crevice is carpeted with tiny _Bryobia_ clover mites.

I almost forgot it was #MiteMonday! Inspired by @zorbama's shot of a running crab spider, clover mite, and midge all together (https://veganism.social/@zorbama/114373000260983349), here's a running crab spider (_Philodromus_) I found feeding on a clover mite (_Bryobia_). I don't actually often find many arthropods feeding on the adults, though I've seen predatory _Anystis_ mites eating the eggs.

I almost forgot it was #MiteMonday! From under one of my reliable dead logs just a few days ago, a mesostig with its prey, a tiny white springtail; a slug for scale; and a smaller, paler mesostig crossing paths with another springtail (which it did not try to eat).

The first #MiteMonday in a while! The wet dead leaves are a bountiful source of predatory mesostigmatid mites.

#MiteMonday: wintertime rock flipping turned up some penthaleids and those iridescent purple springtails, not quite sure what they are. They were about the same size (see third photo).

Gotta post something for the last #MiteMonday of the year. Here's some mesostigs (family Parasitidae or thereabouts?), predators of the undergrowth, making their way across alien landscapes of fungus and leaf litter on the underside of a dead log.

#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites • #Acari #Parasitiformes #Mesostigmata

#MiteMonday: checked out my favourite dead logs, got more pictures of mesostigs preying on springtails!!

#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites • #Acari #Parasitiformes #Mesostigmata #Parasitidae???

#MiteMonday × #LichenSubscribe: we got some flurries today, but at a few degrees above zero the clover mites (_Bryobia_) are still out and about. Here's one climbing over a tiny crumb of lichen.

#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #CloverMites • #Acari #Acariformes #Tetranychidae #Bryobiinae

#MiteMonday, perhaps.
Not entirely sure these are mites, as I know next to nothing about them.

#iNaturalist thinks it might be Linopodes.

Saw them when I turned over a piece of rotting wood to have a better look at the bottom of the fungi growing on it.

I can't even wait for #MiteMonday, this is too exciting, I have to share it now!!!

In Walter & Proctor's _Mites: Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour: Life at a Microscale_, there's this great image of mites in the family Acaridae mating, with the male facing backwards and his aedeagus (dick) inserted into the female's dorsal copulatory opening (bussy [back pussy]), so he is carried along on her back, a bit like a wheelbarrow race, but backwards.

Anyway this evening I was idly taking macro of the mites in the fruit fly culture when I SAW IT. It's easier to make out with video.

marked nsfw for graphic photos and videos of mite sex, you were warned

#Mitestodon #DailyMiteVid #arachnids #mites #MiteBehaviour • #Acari #Acariformes #Acaridae

#MiteMonday: Astig explosion!!!

I had been putting off making a new tub of fruit fly medium and excelsior for the flightless fruit flies, and discovered the other day that the current tub had quite the population of astigmatid mites, feeding off the same stuff and emerging in great numbers to swarm the outside of the tub during the warmest part of the day. I was actually pretty excited about this, as I hadn't personally seen an infestation of these since childhood, long before I started doing smartphone macrophotography (as a matter of fact, long before smartphones existed, but anyway…), and posts about them on bug ID forums are, for some reason, virtually always low-res shaky videos. So I actually had a chance to get up-close photos!

Astigs, which branched off from oribatids, are a large and diverse group. Some common species, largely in the family Acaridae (like _Acarus siro_ and _Tyrophagus putrescentiae_), are found around the world as pests of stored products. They may be called "grain mites", "mold mites", "flour mites", "cheese mites", etc. They are harmless, though in huge numbers (e.g. in a bakery, barn, or grain silo) they can spoil food.

I had just been using a pantyhose sock thing to cover the fruit fly tub, but I went out and got surgical masks so I can make something less porous. I'll also make a fresh batch of fruit fly medium and toss the old tub. That should help keep the mites at a more manageable level.

I can't ID these precisely—you really need an expert with a key and a microscope—but they're likely Acaridae of some kind.

#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites • #Acari #Acariformes #Acaridae

One of the stranger finds in the garden this summer was a Treehopper (Glossonotus univittatus). It took me a while to even realize that this thing was an insect.
In fact, there are two animals in this photo: a red mite is hitching a ride or a meal on the Hopper's head.

MITE ON MITE ACTION

This orange, alien-looking predatory mite is in the family Labidostommatidae, and has proudly caught a tiny hard-bodied mite (Scheloribatidae) to eat.

BUT it's not easy to crack through an oribatid mite's armour, which is probably why it was constantly carrying it around instead of eating it!

It's just another mite, mite Monday…

The two little bumps on this _Balaustium_ sidewalk mite's head are organs called urnulae. For a very long time we didn't know what they were for. It was only in the past few decades that scientists learned the urnulae secreted chemicals that could deter insect attacks and alert fellow mites to danger: https://doi.org/10.1080/01647950608684438 / https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/01647950608684438

#MiteMonday #DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #MiteBehaviour • #Acari #Erythraeidae

#MiteMonday: meet _Podocinum_! Found several of these tiny predatory fellows under a rock, feeling their way around with their long, thin front legs tipped with forked hairs, a little reminiscent of a pseudoscorpion's claws. However they are dwarfed by even the small pseudoscorpions in my garden.