neville park on Nostr: #Arachtober 3: spider mites (family Tetranychidae)! These tiny herbivorous mites are ...

#Arachtober 3: spider mites (family Tetranychidae)! These tiny herbivorous mites are the bane of gardeners and farmers the world over. Spider mites in the subfamily Tetranychinae leave sheets of a very fine silk they produce, finer than spider silk, over heavily infested plants.

This plant in a nearby park showed the telltale "stippled" look of spider mite feeding on its leaves, and tiny mites could be seen especially on the leaf undersides.

I cannot stress how tiny they are. If you can get a good phone picture of individual mites without magnification, they're probably not spider mites.

#DailyMitePic #Mitestodon #arachnids #mites #SpiderMites • #Acari #Acariformes #Tetranychidae #Tetranychinae