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Content with tag mites .

Feather mites, small “vacuum cleaners” that clean the plumage of birds at night

A research team from the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC), the University of Granada, and the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, USA) has studied the nocturnal activity of mites living permanently on bird flight feathers. They have found that feather mites are nocturnal beings: they move, feed, and lay eggs at night while the bird sleeps. It has been estimated that they clean ca. 80,000?m2 of “dirt” (fungi, bacteria, and other particles) in just European passerines

Water boatman survival and fecundity are related to ectoparasitism and salinity stress

Salinity is increasing in aquatic ecosystems in the Mediterranean region due to global change, and this is likely to have an important impact on host-parasite interactions. Here the relationships between infection by ectoparasitic water mites and salinity variation, on survival and fecundity of water boatmen Corixidae from Doñana National Park was studied in the laboratory. Larvae of Sigara lateralis parasitised by larval mites (Hydrachna skorikowi) had lower survivorship, and failed to moult...