Nature Bulletin No. When adult they have eight legs. Insects have six. Mites and ticks differ from spiders by having the head, thorax and abdomen all fused into one oval-shaped baglike body. Throughout the world, many thousand species of mites have been identified and every year new kinds are found.
Mites vary greatly in appearance and habits.
They range in size from those 90 small that they cannot be seen without the aid of a microscope, up to some which are about one-half inch long. Some of the tiniest are wormlike and suck the juices of plants, causing blemishes and galls. Other pigmies live in the breathing passages of bees. Mites vary in color from white and pale yellow, gray or green to brilliant red or orange. A few species bear their young alive but, generally, the female lays from two dozen to a hundred or more eggs.