Hypoaspis miles?
I periodically see these little guys on my orchid base/leaves… they are *very* tiny (maybe 0.1-0.3mm) brown specks to the naked eye and have 8 legs (implying they are a large arachnid/mite). Moving under 1000x magnification, they are slightly transparent. The plants themselves are happy and in bloom. I’m thinking these are predatory mites, possibly hypoaspis miles? Wondering if anyone can confirm. #mites #bugs
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@DreamMachine I believe they are hypoaspis miles (beneficial predatory mites that eat other mites and bugs but not plants) but am wondering if anyone on here has that kind of knowledge to confirm
@smushface would be pretty awesome to have predatory mites without having to buy them 😅 They sure look close from what I can see, but I’m no arachnidologist (is that even a thing?). Have you found them in the substrate at all?
@DreamMachine I think I’ve occasionally seen them on the top of the substrate when an orchid has gone pretty dry, but they catch my attention the most against a green backdrop (leaves) and they tend to roam around like they’re patrolling. I suspect they came with an orchid order early last year that I also noticed springtails on… I tend to see them when I’m drying out orchids I’ve kept a bit too wet a bit too long where the springtail population is hitting the point where it could stand to be culled back… so I believe they are feasting on excess springtails, plus I also had gnats for a few weeks about 2 months ago bc they came in the medium of a tissue culture seedling and escaped bathroom jail (so they probably proliferated on eating some minority percentage of the gnat larvae). I should probably just spend a stretch of time trying to catch them in the act of something instead of swiping them off on an insecticide-soaked Qtip and inspecting them in isolation.