Spider Mite - The Smallest Bug I Have Ever Seen

I found this guy in a petri dish with a sample of moss I got from my yard last spring. I've kept the moss alive the whole time by adding small amounts of water and keeping it under my desk lamp.

There does not seem to be much information online about them, and I was not able to find this particular species by searching Google. I do have a whole family of them in the petri dish though, which I found by using a stereo microscope to look at the moss one day.

Here's a video of him.

And a couple of stills.

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Great captures Mitch. 140 um....no idea how minute that is!

Thanks Kurt. There are 1000 µm in one mm. Very small, your eye can not see it without help.

Amazing. I tend to think of microscopic organisms as being unlike the creatures we perceive with the naked eye, but clearly that's not the case. This mite is very much like its bigger cousins despite being ~ 1/10 their size. One must wonder: what is the smallest organism in the world that has legs and walks around like any old animal?

Thanks Gator. Take a look at Toby's thread. We were discussing it there. This spider mite is very close to the smallest, but there is a smaller yet parasitic wasp.

To put this more in perspective, Daphnia are much bigger than this mite. I have seen Rotifers almost 3 times as big. So the lines of size are crossed many times. There are Cyclops, a copapod, that is directly related to insects, but has no heart or lungs. They use to have both, but devolved them after finding them not necessary.

Our world is just amazing.

great capture Mitch!

Interesting captures mitch
Brian v

Thanks Martin and Brian. I would like to find this species listed somewhere, but I think there are still more bugs that haven't been named than have.

Brillint Mitch

Thanks Bas. By the way, this is the bug I at first thought was a springtail.