survey of mite lifespans: preface to part 3

This volume is part 3 of a series of surveys of mite lifespans and related life history data. The first part in 2021 covered the suborder Oribatida (excluding Astigmata), Winterschmidtiidae, Eriophyoidea, Tydeidae, Anystidae, Cheyletidae, and Blattisociidae (Zhang 2021). The second part (Zhang 2022) included reviews of life history data for three important families of economic importance: Tetranychidae (Li et al. 2022), Phytoseiidae (Han et al. 2022), and Laelapidae (Zhang et al. 2022). I am pleased to introduce Part 3 of this series, with three reviews for the superorder Parasitiformes: the order Ixodida, or the ticks (Chen et al. 2024), the family Parasitidae (Lewandowski & Pińkowska 2024), and the family Rhodacaridae (Momen et al. 2024). About 10% of the 960 tick species are of importance in animal and human health, and we have life history data reviewed for 12.2% of the species (Chen et al. 2024). It is noteworthy that the longest-living mite is a soft tick—Argas brumpti Neumann—which had survived for 27 years in the laboratory (Shepherd 2022).