Collective Migration in House Dust Mites

Abstract

House dust mites (Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus) are widespread in the furniture and mattresses of homes throughout Eurasia. Because human occupation induces wide diurnal fluctuations in temperature and relative humidity, the most favourable locations for mites change constantly and they must migrate repeatedly. Here, we triggered and studied mites migration movements to a new area. Mites migrated from a starting arena to a second arena through a diamond‐shaped corridor offering a choice between two branches of equal length. In this article, we show that local air dryness and a distant water source were both necessary to trigger collective migration. Males and nymphs had a higher probability of migration than larvae and females. When migrating, although both branches initially appeared to be chosen equally, most mites eventually ended up choosing one particular branch. When about 50 or more mites had passed, there was an obvious choice of branch. We used a modelling approach to show that these data support the hypothesis that mites lay an attractive trail that is reinforced by followers. Consequently, the consistency of the collective choice is higher as the number of migrants grows. This article is the first to observe dust mite migration as a collective phenomenon.

Social Recognition in the Arachnida

“…Arachnid species that show social behaviour are characterised by high intra-and often interspecific tolerance when forming groups (spiders: Wickler 1987/scorpions: Shivashankar 1994;Cloudsley-Thompson 2011/pseudoscorpions: Weygoldt 1969;Tizo-Pedroso 2009/harvestmen: Machado andMacías-Ordoñez 2007;Chelini et al 2012/mites, Mori andSaito 2006;Mailleux et al 2011;Strodl and Schausberger 2012b). Unless there is indiscriminate tolerance of any foreign individual, these species must have developed recognition abilities to discriminate acceptable group members from those that will be refused.…”

“…So, intraspecific tolerance allows the development of gregarity as one of the simplest forms of social interactions. Loose short-term aggregations to share a shelter, to exploit a resource or to protect themselves against predators are known for several arachnids, such as harvestmen (Chelini et al 2012), scorpions (Polis and Lourenço 1986), mites (Mailleux et al 2011) and spiders (Buskirk 1981). The most advanced level of social living is cooperation, characterised by individuals working together to accomplish a certain task to obtain individual fitness benefits (Whitehouse and Lubin 2005).…”

House Dust Mites Avoidance and Allergic Children

“…The trapping device was a medical device, commercialized under the name of Acar'up®, it was composed of a textile and a spray containing the attracting solution. For the users of the trapping device, the modus operandi was to put a textile on the mattress or on the sofa, to spray an attracting solution that contains aggregative pheromones [24] on the technical textile. Both the textile and the attractive solution attracted mites (unpublished data, patent in course).…”

“…The principle of the trapping device is to attract mites out of mattresses or sofas with their own pheromones [24], to take them away and to kill them without insecticides. The allergens produced by mites were eliminated by using a vacuum cleaner after the first use of the trapping device.…”

Der p 1 is the primary activator of Der p 3, Der p 6 and Der p 9 the proteolytic allergens produced by the house dust mite Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus

“…pteronyssinus was reared in the Earth and Life Institute (UCL, Belgium). They were reared at 20°C and 75% humidity as previously described [23]. In some rearing boxes, mites were starved until death.…”