Clover Mites
You may have come across a Clover Mite (Bryobia praetiosa) either on your lawn, in the woods or inside your house. While they are closely related to ticks, there is no cause for alarm as they do not bite and are not harmful to humans. These tiny, pin head-size mites feed on the sap of clover, grasses and roughly 200 other flowering plants.
All Clover Mites are female — they reproduce parthenogenetically and do not need males in order for their eggs to be viable. The (up to 70) eggs they lay and the larvae are bright red, while adults are reddish-brown. Clover Mites are extremely common this time of year, as well as in the fall.
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Harvestmen Harvesting
Like their relatives – spiders, mites, ticks and scorpions – Daddy Longlegs, or Harvestmen, have eight legs (the second, longer, pair of legs are used as antennae). Of all the arachnids, spiders resemble Harvestmen most closely. However, there are distinct differences between the two orders. Unlike spiders, the two main body sections of Harvestmen are nearly joined and appear as one structure. Harvestmen have no spinnerets nor do they possess poison glands. They also do not have the enzymes spiders have that are capable of breaking down the insides of their prey into liquid. Harvestmen ingest small particles, breaking them down with their chelicerae, or mouthparts, which resemble miniature, toothed lobster claws. One would surmise from this photograph that the legs of flies must lack the nutrition worthy of mastication.
A Gardener’s Favorite Beetle
Ground beetles (family Carabidae) are fast moving beetles, many of which are predators with specialized diets. One ground beetle (Cychrus caraboides) eats only snails (its head and thorax are very slender, allowing access to the inside of a snail’s shell). Another, Harpalus rufipes, limits its diet to strawberry seeds. Loricera pilicornis uses bristles on its antennae to trap springtails and mites.
The Bronze Carabid, Carabus nemoralis, (pictured) uses its large curved mandibles to crush and slice through prey – it will eat or try to eat just about any invertebrate, but specializes in capturing and eating slugs. Its hardened forewings, or elytra, have a coppery sheen to them, and parts of its thorax and the edges of its elytra are iridescent purple. This nocturnal, introduced, flightless, one-inch-long beetle resides throughout the Northeast and is already actively pursuing slugs.
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Parasitoids & Parasites
By definition, a parasitoid is an organism that lives on or in a host organism and ultimately kills the host. The pictured Pelecinid Wasp is a parasitoid. Its host is the grub, or larval stage, of June Bug beetles. The female Pelecinid Wasp uses its long abdomen to probe into the soil until it locates a June Bug grub and then it lays an egg on the grub. When the egg hatches, the wasp larva burrows into and feeds on the grub, eventually causing its death.
A parasite is much like a parasitoid, deriving nutrients from a host, but, unlike a parasitoid, a parasite does not usually kill its host. Often parasites are much smaller than their host, and frequently live in or on their host for an extended period of time. In this photograph, a parasitoid, the Pelecinid Wasp, is host to reddish parasitic mites (located on its thorax).
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Gall-making Mites on Sugar Maple Leaves
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Within a week or two of unfurling, Sugar Maple leaves are attacked and consumed by all kinds of creatures, some of which are insects and mites that cause the leaves to develop abnormal growths called galls. Certain species of eriophyid mites form felt, or erineum, galls, often on Silver and Sugar Maple leaves. After spending the winter months under the scales of buds, these mites emerge in the spring when leaves appear, move out onto the surface of the leaves and begin to feed. Their feeding induces the growth of thousands of tightly-packed leaf hairs which provide shelter for the mites on the leaf surface. These hairs appear as bright pink or red patches that resemble felt. The mites, too small to even be seen with a hand lens, move to the inside of these structures for the rest of the growing season.
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Red Foxes and a Minuscule Mite
A recent glimpse of a Red Fox whose tail was hairless except for a pompom-like tuft of fur at the very tip reminded me of the devastating effect a very small creature can have on an animal many times its size. A tiny, eyeless mite (Sarcoptes scabei) is responsible for the loss of fur associated with sarcoptic mange, the scourge of Red Foxes. After mating on a fox (often near the tail end), the male mite dies and the female burrows into the fox’s skin, laying eggs as she goes. After the eggs hatch, the larvae move to a new patch of skin, burrow in and eventually emerge as adult mites, ready to mate and continue the cycle. To add insult to injury, Red Foxes have an intense immune response to the mites’ excrement and the resulting inflammation is extremely itchy. Biting and scratching exacerbate the situation, causing new skin tears where bacteria can enter. Eventually, most foxes die of exhaustion, starvation and/or infection.
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