98 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vOL. IM 



living nymphs and adults, culturing of trombiculids was much 

 facilitated. 



Jenkins (1947) published a method, incorporating the results 

 of other workers, by which three species of Trombicula had been 

 cultured successfully. He used terrapins and snakes as hosts for 

 larvae, soil as a medium, and mosquito eggs as food for nymphs 

 and adults. Jayewickreme and Niles (1947) outlined a method 

 which employed cellulose wadding as a medium, mice as hosts for 

 larvae, and Culex eggs and freshly killed collembolans as food for 

 the free-living stages. Farrell and Wharton (1949) featured an 

 improved culture jar, golden hamsters as hosts, and vermiculite 

 as a medium. The most recent information on culturing was by 

 Lipovsky (1951). He reported having reared about 25 species 

 of trombiculids to the adult stage. He obtained larvae from about 

 15 species of these reared adults. The species were not named 

 but were stated to represent six known genera, including 

 Euschongastia, and two undescribed genera. In Lipovsky's method 

 a collembolan, Sinella curviseta Brook, fed on active dried yeast 

 pellets was maintained in the chigger cultures. The nymphal and 

 adult trombiculids fed on the collembolan eggs or the active stages 

 of the insect. 



Ecology and behavior: Literature concerned directly with 

 the ecology and behavior of trombiculids is scant. Much ecological 

 information has been acquired in the basic collection data ac- 

 companying all specimens and their descriptions. These data 

 consist of locality, date, and host. Occasionally notes have been 

 added which state the areas infested on the host. Other valuable 

 information, including the fundamental details of life history and 

 food requirements, has come from the efforts to culture chiggers. 



Riley (1873) gave one of the first ecological notes on pest 

 chiggers of the United States. He said their habitat was rank 

 herbage and grass in forest openings or along streams. He stated 

 that chiggers bury themselves in the skin and that "The normal 

 food ... of these mites must, apparently, consist of the juices of 

 plants, and the love of blood proves ruinous to those individuals 

 which get a chance to indulge it ... . They soon die — victims 

 of their sanguinary appetite." Riley repeated these comments in 

 1887. Chittenden (1915) associated pest chiggers with briar 

 patches and gave a life cycle which omitted the nymph. He con- 

 fused chiggers with arthropod-infesting trombidiids. He stated 

 chiggers burrow under the skin and apparently gorge with blood. 

 In 1915 Banks gave a brief account of pest chiggers, listing 

 common names. He said, "They enter pores of the skin and pro- 



