A morphometric study of Eutrombicula alfreddugesi (Acari: Trombiculidae) infesting four sympatric species of Tropidurus (Squamata: Tropiduridae) in northeastern Brazil (original) (raw)

2011, Phyllomedusa: Journal of Herpetology

The mites of the trombiculid family, or "chiggers," are cosmopolitan and parasitic on a wide range of terrestrial vertebrates, including amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Only the larvae are parasites; the other stages are freeliving in the soil (Wharton and Fuller 1952, Brennan and Goff 1977, Bush et al. 2001). Chiggers of the genus Eutrombicula Ewing, 1938, are thought not to have preferences for specific hosts (Brennan and Reed 1974) because they infest different taxa (Ewing 1944, Wharton 1952). Eutrombicula alfreddugesi (Oudemans, 1910) is a chigger commonly found parasitizing different vertebrate host groups, such as reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals (e.g., Wharton and Fuller 1952, Daniel and Stekol'nikov 2004,