Plant Mites and Sociality Diversity and Evolution
Mites are very small animals, characterized by wingless and eyeless bodies, in which sociality has been discovered. This book offers detailed descriptions of the diverse social systems and the social evolution of mites, ranging from genetic to ecological
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Yutaka Saito
Plant Mites and Sociality Diversity and Evolution
Dr. Yutaka Saito Professor of Animal Ecology Hokkaido University Research Institute of Agriculture Kita 9, Nishi 9, Kita-ku Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8589 Japan
ISBN 978-4-431-99455-8 e-ISBN 978-4-431-99456-5 DOI 10.1007/978-4-431-99456-5 Springer Tokyo Berlin Heidelberg New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009934686 © Springer 2010 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Front cover: Top: Male prey counterattacking larval predator Lower left: Two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae Back cover: Upper left: Social cheyletid mite waiting for prey in a sit-and-wait stance Upper right: Symbiosis between a spider mite and a psyllid? Background, front and back covers: Sasa ground cover in Hokkaido forest Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Preface
This book is on mite sociality. I have studied spider mite diversity for 35 years mostly from the perspective of evolutionary ecology, and this led to the discovery of several new phenomena on sociality in plant mites. My main interest is similar to that of Jean-Henri Fabre, the famous French entomologist, although my studies have been restricted to a few mite groups and yield no comparison to his broad, encyclopedic knowledge. On the other hand, I used some modern methodologies that could not have been adopted in his period. Of course I would not dare to compare my contributions to those of such a great entomologist, but I believe that the studies described in this book bear some resemblance to his work. At least I have been fortunate to learn about the wonderful world of mites, and I hope the readers of this book will experience this excitement as well. When I first planned to write this book, several colleagues advised me not to focus just on my own work but to address wider themes in mite biology. I have surely tried to do so, but now in retrospect I am wondering whether I achieved this goal, because my target mite species are limited to a narrow area of Asia and may not be representative of all mites. However, I suspect that these “extraordinary” species may well be distributed over a much larger part of the world: they may simply not have been discovered and studied so far. Therefore, if someone wishes to study them after reading this book, it will give me considerable satisfaction. Mites are small animals that live in a world they cannot see. They are also hard to see by the naked eye because of their very small b
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