Oribatid Mites

Dr. Valerie Behan-Pelletier is an Honorary Research Associate (an Emeritus position) with the Research Branch of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the federal department responsible for maintaining the national collections of insects, arachnids, nematodes, fungi and vascular plants. As a global specialist in the taxonomy and ecology of Oribatida for over 45 years, she has published a number of large monographs on oribatid mites for North America and has contributed to multi-chapter works on biodiversity, soil ecology, and ecological assessments. She is a Section Editor of the 2012 Oxford University Press publication Soil Ecology and Ecosystem Services, is a coeditor of the Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas (2016) and is coauthor of a chapter on Aquatic Oribatida in Thorp and Covich's (2016) Freshwater Invertebrates (4th ed.), Vol. II: Keys to Nearctic Fauna, Elsevier. She has published over 150 research papers. She is a past Scientific Editor of Memoirs of the Entomological Society of Canada, former Secretary of the International Congress of Acarology, and Fellow of the Entomological Society of Canada. Dr. Zoë Lindo is Full Professor, Department of Biology, Western University, London, Ontario. They are an expert in forest soil biodiversity and ecosystem function. Zoë has worked extensively in Canadian forests including the mixed-wood boreal of Alberta, the subarctic taiga of Quebec, the coastal temperate rainforest of British Columbia, and the black spruce / peatlands of Ontario. As a specialist in the ecology of soil invertebrates and the taxonomy and ecology of Oribatida for 25 years, their research focusses on ecosystems that are currently undergoing dramatic changes in biodiversity due to habitat loss and fragmentation associated with land use change, pollution, overexploitation, and climate change. They have published over 75 research papers and was recently a lead author for the UN-FAO Report on the State of Knowledge of Soil Biodiversity: Status, Challenges and Potentialities (Dec. 2020). They are a member of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative, the Biological Survey of Canada and is Editor-in-Chief of Pedobiologia-Journal of Soil Ecology.

1. Introduction. 2. Form and Function. 3. Keys to Families, Genera and Species. 4. Ecology of Oribatida. 5. Diversity of oribatid mites across the Northern North American landscape. References. Index