Mites Take Flight on Hummingbird Beaks

Sean Graesser鈥檚 larger-than-life photos reveal a fascinating, tiny world where hummingbirds carry passengers aloft.

Think your commute鈥檚 rough? Just be glad you鈥檙e not a hummingbird flower mite.

When their mode of transit arrives, these tiny tropical arachnids鈥攕maller than聽the period at the end of this sentence鈥攈ave one or two seconds to board. When they arrive at their destination, they get another instant to disembark, which requires them to run, for their size, faster than a cheetah. Oh, and if they get off at the wrong stop?聽They鈥檒l probably die alone.

Still, as these photos show, hummingbird flower mites ride in style聽on some of the flashiest birds in the world. Wildlife researcher and photographer Sean Graesser used a Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens to capture the detailed shots of mites on hummingbird beaks in Costa Rica this past winter.聽

The relationship between the hummingbirds and their eight-legged passengers is a budding research interest for Graesser, who in 2010 co-founded the , a volunteer-based facility on Costa Rica鈥檚 Pacific Coast. The station鈥檚 banding program has highlighted the urgency of protecting tropical habitat by showing that Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and other migratory species return each winter to the same small patch of forest.

Graesser, who also works as a field biologist for 香港六合开奖记录 Connecticut, photographs many of the birds he bands, and he believes聽those images can be just as important as the research itself. 鈥淎t some point I found that I was seeing all these amazing things that not a lot of people were seeing,鈥 he says. Graesser wanted to share his experiences and his conservation message with a larger audience than he could reach through academic journals, so he turned to social media. There, his superb聽photos have been proven highly聽popular: more than 34,000 people follow his bird-focused . 鈥淚 find that compelling images that bring light to scientific projects seem to be much more powerful right now,鈥 he says.

Robert Colwell, an evolutionary ecologist with the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, doesn鈥檛 need any help getting excited about what he calls his 鈥渇avorite tiny creatures.鈥 He鈥檚 published at least 20 scientific papers about hummingbird flower mites since the 1970s, and even has a species named for him. Yet, after a career of looking at mites under a microscope, 鈥淚鈥檝e never seen such absolutely stunning, sharp-focused close-ups鈥 as Graesser's photos, Colwell says.

There are perhaps more than a million mite species worldwide, each occupying a narrow niche in its ecosystem. Every flower mite is adapted to munch the pollen and drink the nectar of a single plant species, and聽there are flower mites that travel from blossom to blossom on birds, bats, bees, and beetles. 鈥淰irtually all tropical insects I鈥檝e seen have mites riding on them,鈥 Colwell says. They can walk between flowers on the same plant, but when the local food supply runs low, they need rapid transit to cover what to them are vast distances between plants. Opportunity arrives when a hummingbird pauses to drink from their host flower. The hungry mites scramble up its beak and latch on to its nostrils. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 where the olfactory information is,鈥 Colwell says. When they smell their preferred blossom, they sprint down the bird鈥檚 beak and dig into the sugary buffet.

It鈥檚 a lousy deal for hummingbirds, who give free rides to their own competition. Mites can eat up to half a flower鈥檚 nectar, so the birds have to visit more flowers to fuel up. 鈥淎 hummingbird is very expensive to fly,鈥 as Colwell puts it鈥攊f humans had similar energy needs, we鈥檇 have to consume .

While it's a convenient form of travel, the mites鈥 hitching life isn鈥檛 without risk. If they de-bird at the wrong kind of plant, they鈥檙e greeted by other mite species that at best find them unattractive and at worst decide to kill them. But Colwell鈥檚 research shows that only about one out of every 200 flower聽mites makes that mistake. Not bad for a bunch of freeloading nostril-clingers.

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Bonus: Sean Graesser doesn't just photograph hummingbirds and their puny passengers. Below, check out聽some of our favorite shots from Graesser's latest trip to Costa Rica.

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香港六合开奖记录 is a nonprofit working to save birds and the places they need. To support our conservation efforts,聽