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Photo#879977
Whirligig Mite

Whirligig Mite
Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts, USA
December 28, 2013
Found on a rock in my basement.

Moved
Moved from Erythracarinae.

 
when raised to family?
Hi Ray:

Cool. When did Erythracarinae become its own family?

Cheers,
Heather

 
Erythracaridae
Hi Heather,

This story is pretty interesting. It turns out the evidence supporting a close relationship between Erythracarus-like mites and Anystis-like mites was never robust anyway. Several researchers questioned this relationship (e.g., Olomski 1995) and others used "Erythracaridae" and "Anystidae" without really considering actual affinities (e.g., Van Der Hammen 1986, Wu & Wright 2013, 2015). So one way to address this question is to flip it on its end and ask, why were Erythracarus-like mites not always considered their own family?

That said, actual phylogentic support for splitting the subfamilies comes from two sources. Otto (2000) did a morphological analysis that did not recover Anystis grouping with erythracarines. Of course, his analysis was not meant to address anystid monophyly and should not be considered the end of the story, but his section on anystid monophyly in that paper is an excellent writeup on the subject.

Pepato & Klimov (2015) are the first authors I know of to actually reject anystid monophyly and formerly propose re-establishing Erythracaridae as its own family, with good support.

Hope you had a nice holiday season!

Ray

 
the backstory
Thanks, Ray! Sounds like this deserves a more complete molecular treatment. Maybe Jurgen Otto should take a break from his peacock spiders and return to his anystoid roots :-)

 
Haha!
Agreed! Although... wow those videos are spectacular!

Thoroughly sampling anystoids is outside the scope of my current projects, but I am including members of all major prostig groups, including Anystis and Eyrthracarus, in my phylogenomic analysis on Parasitengona. So, although I think the case is already pretty sound, we may soon have robust molecular support for their affinities, which is pretty exciting.

Moved
Moved from Whirligig Mites.

Moved
Moved from Mites and Ticks.

Anystidae
It is indeed a lovely whirligig mite (Prostigmata: Anystidae).

Moved for expert attention.
Moved from ID Request.

Reminds me a bit of this one:



I have no idea if that's anywhere close, though. :)

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