MBP - New order for the project · iNaturalist Mexico

Wow! Congratulations to Jim Moore for documenting a new ORDER for Maryland Biodiversity Project. The order is, of course, quite high taxonomically (remember: Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species). It's like documenting our first beetle (Order Coleoptera) or fly (order Diptera) for the project! This becomes even more impressive when one considers we're in year 12 of the project!

This tiny mite is an arachnid (Class Arachnida) and belongs to the order Oribatida. BugGuide lists several other common names for the order: Armored Mites, Beetle Mites, Moss Mites, and Seed Mites. It was determined to belong to the genus Lucoppia by Lisa Lumley and Heather Proctor via BugGuide.

This order is far from rare, just small and difficult to document and identify. Jim does fine work finding, documenting, and working to identify members of the "smaller majority". There are likely many examples of this order shown in photos of beetles on the MBP site! Here are some fascinating notes on the order Oribatida from BugGuide:

"ca. 1200 spp. in >300 genera of over 100 families in our area, ~16,500 described spp. in ~2,400 genera of ~250 families and ~50 superfamilies worldwide"
"one of the most numerically dominant arthropod groups in the organic horizons of most soils, where their densities can reach several hundred thousand individuals per square meter (Norton 1990) "...we estimate we still know only a quarter of the Canadian fauna at the species level..."
"Leaf litter -- can consume about 20% of its weight in leaf litter every day."
"Can have 50,000 to 500,000 mites per square meter of leaf litter."