Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 16:16:53 -0400
From: “N.A. Booko”
Subject: Chiggers on Daddy Long leg spiders . . .
Last week when I wrote about seeing chiggers hitching a ride on the legs of Daddy Long Leg spiders, someone wrote and told me I was mistaken: “I think you’ve been misinformed about Daddy long legs (harvest men) and chiggers. There’s nothing a chigger would want to consume of a harvest man; more likely the harvest man would consume the chigger. I’d never heard this association of the two before, and I looked it up, as well as information about both harvest men and chiggers. Nada.”
Well, I saw it with my own personal eyeballs and I have a jeweler’s magnifier to re-assure myself. And the info below backs up what I said.
https://www.rochester.k12.mi.us/musson-elementary/pages/15909/chigger- goes on to say:
**”Chiggers are members of the velvet mite family (family Trombidiidae). These mites are easily recognized by their red coloring and dense, velvety hair. Adults measure 1/64—1/8″ (0.5—4 mm) long. Adults eat insect eggs; larvae, known as red bugs, are parasites of insects, spiders, daddy-long-legs, and scorpions. Some cling to a host’s wing even in flight. Many are found in moist woods, others in deserts.”
N.A. Bugko