@misc{10481/72083,
year = {2021},
month = {10},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10481/72083},
abstract = {Birds host a vast diversity of feather symbionts of different
kingdoms, including animals (e.g., lice, mites),
fungi, and bacteria. Feather mites (Acariformes: Astigmata:
Analgoidea and Pterolichoidea), the most abundant
animal ectosymbionts of birds, are permanent
inhabitants of the pterosphere (ptero feather in Greek;
Labrador et al. 2020), and the ones studied here are
easily spotted as small (ca. 0.5 mm) dots on the surface
of flight feathers. They are highly host specific symbionts
(Do~na et al. 2018), and they seem to be commensals or
even mutualists of birds by taking detritus and microorganisms
such as fungi and bacteria from feathers, some
of which are keratinophilic and therefore can damage
the feathers (Blanco and Tella 1997, Galv an 2012, Do~na
et al. 2019). However, many basic questions remain to be
answered, such as the moments and the places where
feather mites eat. Indeed, we wondered whether this
might be partly because feather mites have been studied
mainly during the day, when (most) birds fly, rather than during the night when mites seem to move more freely
on the wings, according to two old anecdotal reports
(Dubinin 1951, McClure 1989). To investigate the night
ecology of feather mites, we initially spent a whole night
observing them on two individual birds. At that point,
we were unaware of how it would change our understanding
of the pterosphere.},
organization = {Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness	CGL2015-69650-P},
organization = {European Commission H2020-MSCAIF-2019 program	886532},
publisher = {John Wiley & Sons},
keywords = {Astigmata},
keywords = {Host-symbiont},
keywords = {Nocturnal},
keywords = {Proctophyllodes},
keywords = {Pterosphere},
keywords = {Trouessartia},
title = {Feather mites at night: an exploration of their feeding, reproduction, and spatial ecology},
doi = {10.1002/ecy.3550},
author = {Labrador, María del Mar and Doña Reguera, Jorge},
}