"Perhaps what you are suggesting is that females seek already infested cells in order to allow for cross fertilization of unrelated males and females. This is a reasonable hypothesis, as it would appear to be to the evolutionary advantage to the mites. However, I haven't seen any finding suggesting that the presence of a foundress is either attractive or repellent to subsequent mite invasion."


Thanks for the reference and also for this thought. I brought up this question last month under the thread "Mite behavior" and was hoping to hear more about it. I think there is lots of room here to explore mite behavior, given that so much of it seems to be unknown. I don't think it would be time wasted, either. And best of all, anybody can do it! We don't need fancy labs to start paying attention to what the mites are actually doing.

Christina

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