Since I am sitting in an airport, it seems like a good time to write about travel. Though insects seem small from our perspective, many of them are able travelers. They can cover long distances by walking, jumping, swimming, digging, and flying. Additionally, they can use their sensitive antennae to detect faraway food (such as carrion, in the case of the burying beetle shown below).
These characteristics make insects an attractive mode of transport for a group of much less mobile arthropods: mites. If you look closely at the burying beetle below, you can see the mite that had crawled out from some hidden spot onto one of the beetle's wing covers (elytra).
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| A mite (Poecilochirus sp.) riding on the back of the tomentose burying beetle. |
Poecilochirus mites are commonly found riding on burying beetles, since these mites also need to get to carrion in order to feed. Some
Poecilochirus mites consume fly eggs and larvae on the carrion, while some are predators of the burying beetles' own eggs. Meanwhile, other mites prefer foods unrelated to carrion and, correspondingly, take different forms of transport in search of those foods.
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| A group of mites rides on the back of the thorax of a mason wasp (Vespidae). |
Are mites at best hitchhikers or free riders? Perhaps not, as some evidence suggests that insects can benefit from the mites too.
Explore some more:
Parasitic mites as part-time bodyguards of a host wasp
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