Ticks And Mites (Acari)

This group gathers Arachnids subcategory members belonging to the subclass Acari, the ticks and mites, an enormously diverse group of mostly very small arachnids found in nearly every terrestrial and freshwater habitat on Earth, including many species too small to see without magnification. It spans ticks, external parasites that attach to a host to feed on blood over an extended period and are medically significant as vectors for serious diseases transmitted during that feeding, and a wide diversity of mites, including chiggers, the parasitic larval stage of a mite family that causes intensely itchy bites in humans without actually feeding on blood as an adult tick does, alongside free-living mites that play major, often overlooked roles in soil ecology, decomposition and the biological control of agricultural pests. Unlike most other arachnid orders, several species in this group have adapted to a fully parasitic lifestyle at some stage of their life cycle, a trait shared with very few other arachnids gathered elsewhere in this atlas.