Adactylidium | |
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Genus: | Adactylidium Cross, 1965 |
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Adactylidium is a genus of mites known for its unusual life cycle. [1] An impregnated female mite feeds upon a single egg of a thrips, rapidly growing five to eight female offspring and one male in her body. The single male mite mates with all his sisters when they are still inside their mother. The new females, now impregnated, eat their way out of their mother's body so that they can emerge to find new thrips eggs, killing their mother in the process (though the mother may be only 4 days old at the time), starting the cycle again. [2] [3] [4] The male emerges as well, but does not look for food or new mates, and dies after a few hours.
Sex is the biological trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes. During sexual reproduction, a male and a female gamete fuse to form a zygote, which develops into an offspring that inherits traits from each parent. By convention, organisms that produce smaller, more mobile gametes are called male, while organisms that produce larger, non-mobile gametes are called female. An organism that produces both types of gamete is hermaphrodite.
Thrips are minute, slender insects with fringed wings and unique asymmetrical mouthparts. Entomologists have described approximately 7,700 species. They fly only weakly and their feathery wings are unsuitable for conventional flight; instead, thrips exploit an unusual mechanism, clap and fling, to create lift using an unsteady circulation pattern with transient vortices near the wings.
Sarcoptes scabiei or the itch mite is a parasitic mite found in all parts of the world that burrows into skin and causes scabies. Humans become infested by Sarcoptes scabiei var. hominis; other mammals can be infested with different varieties of the mite. They include wild and domesticated dogs and cats, ungulates, wild boars, bovids, wombats, koalas, and great apes.
The telephone-pole beetle is a beetle native to the eastern United States and the only known living representative of the otherwise extinct family Micromalthidae. Larvae of the beetle live in decaying wood and can be pests to wooden structures, lending them their common name, the 'telephone-pole beetle.'
Poison dart frog is the common name of a group of frogs in the family Dendrobatidae which are native to tropical Central and South America. These species are diurnal and often have brightly colored bodies. This bright coloration is correlated with the toxicity of the species, making them aposematic. Some species of the family Dendrobatidae exhibit extremely bright coloration along with high toxicity — a feature derived from their diet of ants, mites and termites— while species which eat a much larger variety of prey have cryptic coloration with minimal to no amount of observed toxicity. Many species of this family are threatened due to human infrastructure encroaching on their habitats.
A drone is a male bee. Unlike the female worker bee, a drone has no stinger. He does not gather nectar or pollen and cannot feed without assistance from worker bees. His only role is to mate with a maiden queen in nuptial flight.
Varroa destructor, the Varroa mite, is an external parasitic mite that attacks and feeds on honey bees and is one of the most damaging honey bee pests in the world. A significant mite infestation leads to the death of a honey bee colony, usually in the late autumn through early spring. Without management for Varroa mite, honey bee colonies typically collapse within 2 to 3 years in temperate climates. These mites can infest Apis mellifera, the western honey bee, and Apis cerana, the Asian honey bee. Due to very similar physical characteristics, this species was thought to be the closely related Varroa jacobsoni prior to 2000, but they were found to be two separate species after DNA analysis.
Fish reproductive organs include testes and ovaries. In most species, gonads are paired organs of similar size, which can be partially or totally fused. There may also be a range of secondary organs that increase reproductive fitness. The genital papilla is a small, fleshy tube behind the anus in some fishes, from which the sperm or eggs are released; the sex of a fish can often be determined by the shape of its papilla.
Varroa jacobsoni is a species of mite that parasitises Apis cerana. The more damaging Varroa destructor was previously included under the name V. jacobsoni, but the two species can be separated on the basis of the DNA sequence of the cytochrome oxidase I gene in the mitochondrial DNA.
Haplodiploidy is a sex-determination system in which males develop from unfertilized eggs and are haploid, and females develop from fertilized eggs and are diploid. Haplodiploidy is sometimes called arrhenotoky.
The Phytoseiidae are a family of mites which feed on thrips and other mite species. They are often used as a biological control agent for managing mite pests. Because of their usefulness as biological control agents, interest in Phytoseiidae has steadily increased over the past century. Public awareness of the biological control potential of invertebrates has been growing, though mainly in the US and Europe. In 1950, there were 34 known species. Today, there are 2,731 documented species organized in 90 genera and three subfamilies.
Sexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that involves a complex life cycle in which a gamete with a single set of chromosomes combines with another gamete to produce a zygote that develops into an organism composed of cells with two sets of chromosomes (diploid). This is typical in animals, though the number of chromosome sets and how that number changes in sexual reproduction varies, especially among plants, fungi, and other eukaryotes.
Semelparity and iteroparity are two contrasting reproductive strategies available to living organisms. A species is considered semelparous if it is characterized by a single reproductive episode before death, and iteroparous if it is characterized by multiple reproductive cycles over the course of its lifetime. Iteroparity can be further divided into continuous iteroparity and seasonal iteroparity Some botanists use the parallel terms monocarpy and polycarpy.
Lestes sponsa is a damselfly with a wide Palaearctic distribution. It is known commonly as the emerald damselfly or common spreadwing. Both males and females have a metallic green colour and brown wing spots. It resides near pools with aquatic plants. When resting its wings are usually half opened.
Acarophenacidae is a family of mites in the order Trombidiformes that are egg parasitoids and ectoparasites of beetles or thrips. It contains eight genera and around 40 species.
Callosobruchus chinensis, also known as the adzuki bean weevil, pulse beetle, Chinese bruchid or cowpea bruchid, is a common species of beetle found in the bean weevil subfamily. Although it is commonly known as the adzuki bean weevil, it is in fact not a true weevil, belonging instead to the leaf beetle family, Chrysomelidae.
Frankliniella schultzei, the common blossom thrips or cotton thrips, is a species of thrips in the family Thripidae. It is found in many parts of the world and is an important pest insect in agriculture.
Pison spinolae, commonly known as mason wasp, is a solitary wasp of the family Crabronidae, found throughout New Zealand.
Melittobia australica is a species of chalcid wasp from the family Eulophidae which is a gregarious ecto-parasitoid of acuealate Hymenoptera.
Echinothrips americanus is a species of thrips in the family Thripidae. It is found in North America, Europe, and Asia. E. americanus was first described in 1913 by entomologist A.C. Morgan in Quincy, Florida, where he found the insect on a Veratrum viride plant. Suggested common names include Poinsettia thrips and Impatiens thrips. Since their spread throughout Europe as early as 1995, and subsequently China, E. americanus has been called an "upcoming pest."