We have seen no mites since August and most of the stocks in the affected room have been rebuilt and returned to the collection. The 28 stocks listed below cannot be ordered until our cultures are healthier. You will receive an error message if you try to order these stocks via our automated ordering system. We will make them available as soon as possible but you must wait until they become available through the automated ordering system.

We thank Hans Klompen (Ohio State University, USA), Zhi-Qiang Zhang (Landcare Research, New Zealand) and Larry Arlian (Wright State University, USA) for preliminary identification of mites from our August outbreak as belonging to the family Tarsonemidae. The Tarsonemidae have interesting sex-specific modifications to their 4th pair of legs, evident in these electron micrographs (F. Rudolf Turner, Indiana University, 2011) of mites from BDSC cultures: presumptive male mite; presumptive female mite.

Although we think our stocks are now mite free we cannot be certain, so we urge you to quarantine everything you get from us. Please let us know if you find mites in samples. If you have ordered stocks within the past ~three months and you want more information about the mites, please see our “How to identify the mites currently in Bloomington cultures” webpage.

Previous notes about this mite outbreak are available from the News page.

The following 28 stock number are NOT available for ordering:
1549 2630 3160 5143 5381 6160 6504 7712 8088 8210 8672 8679 8695 8744 8940 9077 9157 9254 9785 10117 10289 10755 10821 10872 11170 11793 11984 12745