FURTHER OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE CYCLE AND LIFE STRATEGY OF A TROMBICULID MITE, HIRSUTIELLA ZACHVATKINI (SCHLUGER, 1948) (ACARIFORMES: TROMBICULIDAE), IN THE LABORATORY

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Acknowledgments:

The author is grateful to Drs. M.K. Stanyuko-vich and A.A. Stekolnikov for the initial collecting and determining of trombiculid mites used in this study. This study is supported by a grant No. 03 - 04-49081 from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.

Annotation:

The life cycle of the East European population of a trombiculid mite, Hirsutiella zachvatkini (Schluger, 1948), was carefully examined in the laboratory at a room temperature for over than four years since autumn, 1998. Eggs of springtails Sinella cumseta Brook were used for feeding of deu-tonymphs and adult mites, guinea pig — for feed-ing of larvae of the first laboratory generation. For the first time in Russia, adult mites of the second generation (the first laboratory generation) of this species were successfully obtained. The life cycle is characterized by more or less constant duration of quiescent instars (prelarva, proto- and tri-tonymphs) mostly restricted by three-four weeks and quite asynchronous development of active stag-es (larva, deutonymph and adult) with the obvious tendency to their maximum duration (179 days for unfed larva, 429 days for deutonymph and 956 days for adult male) so far known for trombiculids. Females show weakly outlined deposition (gener-ation) cycles, and the deposited eggs reveal an extremely long, sporadic and asynchronous devel-opment (maximum 832 days for eggs capable to undergo further development), so that it is nearly impossible to receive a representative quantity of unfed larvae for their subsequent feeding. Never-theless, the species studied is thought to demon-strate a univoltine or semi-univoltine life cycle in nature. Some new hypotheses concerning life strat-egy of boreal and eastern populations of the species are proposed

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