Home | Exotic Mite Pest Families Home | Glossary

Most posterior tarsal claws & empodium

The legs of most mites end in an apotele that bears a pair of claws laterally and an empodium medially.

• The Penthaleidae (Eupodoidea) have paired claws and a pad-like empodium on all of their tarsi.  Both the claws and the empodium bear setose processes, but these do not end in flattened tips (and so are not considered tenet hairs).

• The Eriophyoidea lack claws and have a highly modified, densely branched empodium called a featherclaw.  In the Diptilomiopinae (Diptilomiopidae), the featherclaw is deeply divided medially.

• Most Tetranychoidea have claws and empodia that bear one or more pairs of seta-like processes that end in flattened tips and are called tenet hairs.  The claws may be modified into tenent hairs.  In the Tetranychidae, the Bryobiinae have the typical empodium with tenent hairs; in the Tetranychinae, however, the empodium is claw-like and without tenent hairs (although it may have proximoventral hairs) or highly regressed and usually coded as absent.

• Adult female Tarsonemidae (Tarsonemoidea) have pad-like empodia with paired claws on legs II-III, but leg I has a single claw and leg IV ends in a whip-like or flagellate seta.