Tropical rat mite
Ornithonyssus bacoti (also known as the tropical rat mite and formerly called Liponyssus bacoti) is a hematophagous parasite. It feeds on blood and serum from many hosts. O. bacoti can be found and cause disease on rats and wild rodents most commonly, but also small mammals and humans when other hosts are scarce. Outbreaks tend to occur in older, less maintained buildings. The mite, however, can travel several hundred feet on its own if necessary to find a host and can survive for extended periods of time without a host. This, along with the nonspecific dermatitis it causes, can prevent accurate and fast diagnosis of rat mite dermatitis. The scarcity of reports, due in part to misdiagnosis and also the mildness of its symptoms, makes the disease seem less common than it is. The tropical rat mite can be found in both temperate and tropical regions or rather all continents except the Arctic and Antarctic.
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TerrestrialTerrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land (e.g., cats, ants, snails), as compared with aquatic animals, which liv...
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OviparousOviparous animals are female animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive...
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starts withOrnithonyssus bacoti has five lifestages: egg, larva, protonymph, deutonymph, and adult. The only two stages that feed are the protonymph and the adult. Once they have fed, they either drop off the host to molt or lay up to a 100 eggs. An egg takes one and a half days to hatch into a larva, which then attaches to a host and takes one to two days to molt into a protonymph. A protonymph then molts into an adult. The whole lifeycle takes 7 to 16 days to complete. A minimum of 13 days is needed to go from egg to egg. The larva is the only stage that has three pairs of legs as opposed to four pairs.
