Hi Sam - This is a bit of a Dorothy Dixer, right? You'd know better than anyone as you've been part of teams accumulating the best data on the topic... and that's showing deeper origins of the group than expected, outside of Eupodides, despite recent data that you are right to question.

Personally, I'm not precious about where they belong or deeply invested in the topic. The superfamily seems to be a rock-solid monophyletic group, right? It's just that. as highly specialised mites, their sister-group relationships are murky. So, as an outsider on the debate, the best data will use appropriate molecular phylogenetic techniques for resolving deep branches. When separate sources of this kind of data start singing the same song (e.g. genomes, UCEs), then it's time to listen. I think we're already there, or very close, and if you're looking for links between Endeostigmata or Nematalycidae and Eriophyoidea, then the exciting bit will probably be to keep exploring soils for these often neglected mites. Had I the time and money, then I'd be looking not on the foliage of ancient plant lineages, but in their root systems. To me, that's a possible pathway from soil to plant for the Endeostigmata.

Cheers, Owen.

Good point Owen. I would have liked to have asked this question anonymously. I am interested to know if there is any confusion on this. Recently, a paper came out on this topic that places Eriophyoidea in a nested position within Tydeoidea. I am debating if a rebuttal is needed with my colleagues, and I am genuinely unsure if we should bother or not. The paper is terrible, from beginning to end, and uses every single piece of circular reasoning you can think of to force eriophyoids into Tydeoidea, including manually aligning hypervariable regions to resolve nodes that are more than 200 million years old.

It is very depressing because there really is no ambiguity about where eriophyoids belong. If you disregard circular reasoning that backs up old but very weak ideas, all the data (mitochondrial genomes, whole genomes, sanger sequences and morphology) points in the same direction. Whatever resemblance exists between eriophyoids and tydeoids (and there really is almost none) is down to a handful of paedomorphisms that are highly homoplasious throughout Acariformes. In every other way they are far more like nematalycids. And there is also absolutely nothing about eriophyoids that resembles Trombidiformes (they have rutella like those of nematalycids and lack "prostigmata"). How can we still be stuck on this? But I am unsure if this new paper will be taken seriously. Perhaps this really is done and dusted and we don't need to bother with a rebuttal. But if we do need to bother with a rebuttal, then what good will that do?

Forgive the pessimism, but if people are still wondering about this, then I just can't see how anything more that I and my collaborators can do will make a difference. If whole genomes and numerous complex morphological characters are not convincing, there really is nothing left to do. That said, I think science as a whole is plagued with these problems. This is, after all, why paradigms exist, right? Paradigms are not real and natural phenomena. They are artifacts of the closemindedness of humans. That is not to say that what we are trying to do is break into a new paradigm. Nothing of the sort. This really is a no-brainer. So I guess that is why I am asking this question. If the answers to no-brainers seem uncertain, then I obviously should not be working on hard problems at all, because then I stand no chance of convincing anyone. Forgive the rant and the whining tone of this response. I am just a little peeved at this point.

Cheers,

Sam

Hi Sam,

Whether or not a rebuttal is needed is up to you. Keep it informative. Many of us cannot hope to be an expert at every molecular technique, but will need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each. It's a little like knowing statistics: you may not know how to do a certain analysis, but it's useful to know what is appropriate. A primer on new molecular techniques, with acarological examples, could be useful.

On another point, I'd hardly call the position of Eriophyoidea a paradigm. Evert's 1996 hypothesis is partially upended two years later when he considered new data making connections to Endeostigmata. Evert was no more than curious, like all of us, and used reasoning to reject one idea (the Tetranychoidea-Eriophyoidea hypothesis) and by 1998 was putting two near-equal ideas out there (Tydeoidea-Eriophyoidea; Tydeoidea-Pachygnathoidea). The 2009 Manual of Acarology is hardly confident of placing them in Eupodides and summed up the mid-2000s situation well. So, nobody should have ever felt the Eriophyoidea-Tydeoidea hypothesis was any more than an educated guess. It's taken a lot more quality work to get a better answer, which is the Eriophyoidea-nematalycid/endostigmatan idea. Upending that one will require even better quality data - and good luck to anyone who has that.

Cheers, Owen.

They belong to the acariformes as they divulged from the devonian mites. They fall within the Sarcoptiformes family instead of the Trombidiformes.

I am with Owen, Sam, there are many questions, I am happy with how the paper of Klimov et al. addressed it too. we know that there are many more, 350000 species of plants.... We will be keeping our eyes on all the wonderful articles on eriophyids, and their plants and virus associations.

Sounds like this new paper is not widely known or supported (or people are being quiet and/or confused about the topic). Still, a response is underway, of sorts. I will update this question thread when it is out.

Here is our new review paper on this topic.

Article Where Eriophyoidea (Acariformes) Belong in the Tree of Life

or

https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/14/6/527