Adactylidium

Adactylidium is a genus of mites known for its unusual life cycle.[1] The pregnant female mite feeds upon a single egg of a thrips, growing five to eight female offspring and one male in her body. The single male mite mates with all the daughters when they are still in the mother. The females, now impregnated, eat their way out of their mother's body so that they can emerge to find new thrips eggs.[2] The male emerges as well, but does not look for food or new mates, and dies after a few hours. The females die at the age of 4 days, when their own offspring eat them alive from the inside.[3]

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.
  3. Scott Freeman & Jon C. Herran (2007). "Aging and other life history characters". Evolutionary Analysis (4th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc. p. 484. ISBN 0-13-227584-8.


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