Common Spider Mite

• It was the first chelicerate to have its complete genome sequenced, in 2011, revealing an exceptional enzymatic arsenal for detoxifying plants' defensive compounds.
• When the population gets very dense, the mites spin a collective silk bridge at the tip of the leaf and let the wind carry them off en masse.
• Its cycle can be completed in a week in warm weather, which lets an infestation explode within days.
• Despite the name red spider mite, it is no spider: it is a mite, and for much of the year it is rather greenish or yellowish. The red appears mainly in females about to overwinter.
• It feeds on more than a thousand plant species, one of the widest host ranges known in any herbivore.
• It pierces the leaf cells and empties their contents, leaving a pale stippling and, in heavy attacks, drying out the whole plant.
• In warm conditions its cycle closes in under a week, so a population can multiply before the damage is even noticed.
• That speed, together with its capacity for detoxification, has made it one of the arthropods with the most documented acaricide resistances in the world.
• Its genome was the first of any mite to be sequenced, in 2011.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (arachnid)

Habitat and environment

Undersides of the leaves of hundreds of species of cultivated and wild plants

Gestation / incubation

The full cycle can be completed in under a week in warm conditions

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Tetranychus urticae · ScienceDirect (Hughes 1989) · Science Advances, How colonial animals evolve · Wikipedia, Zooid