Adactylidium

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] The male emerges as well, but does not look for food or new mates, and dies after a few hours.

Adactylidium
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Arthropoda
Class:
Arachnida
Subclass:
Acari
Order:
Trombidiformes
Family:
Acarophenacidae
Genus:
Adactylidium

Cross, 1965

See also

References
  1. Stephen Jay Gould (1980). "Death Before Birth, or a Mite's Nunc Dimittis". The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 69–75. ISBN 0-393-01380-4.
  2. T. B. Kirkwood & T. Cremer (1982). "Cytogerontology since 1881: a reappraisal of August Weismann and a review of modern progress" (PDF). Human Genetics. 60 (2): 101–121. doi:10.1007/BF00569695. PMID 7042533. S2CID 25744635.
  3. Scott Freeman & Jon C. Herran (2007). "Aging and other life history characters". Evolutionary Analysis (4th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc. p. 484. ISBN 978-0-13-227584-2.


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