What if I told you that the oldest known biotic association of arthropods is a piece of Lebanese amber from the Cretaceous period? At the same time that flowering plants were diversifying, astigmatid mites were finding a very convenient way to get around: on the backs of termites. Can mites and termites be friends? How does one identify a tiny mite specimen without damaging its equally-important host? Learn the answers to these questions and more from Dr. Hemen Sendi on this episode of the New Species Podcast.

Hemen’s paper “The oldest continuous association between astigmatid mites and termites preserved in Cretaceous amber reveals the evolutionary significance of phoresy” is in volume 25 of BMC Ecology and Evolution. 

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-025-02351-5

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Hemen Sendi - Transcript

This work was supported by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under project No. 09I03-03-V04-00439.

New Species: Plesioglyphus lebanotermi

Episode image credit: Hemen Sendi

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