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Shown here is a yellow mite crawling among fungi growing on a citrus plant.

It's just one of the many high-magnification, psuedo-color photos produced by Eric Erbe, a botanist, and Chris Pooley, a computer specialist. They both work at ARS' Nematology Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland.

There, Erbe has developed a special holder for steadying mite specimens while they're frozen in liquid nitrogen at -320 degrees Farenheit (That's 352 degrees below the temperature at which water turns to ice!). This technique allows him to photograph the critters up to 50,000 times their actual size. It also avoids squashing the mites, which can happen when glass slides are used for light microscope examination.

Using these photos, scientists known as acaroligsts (ack-ar-ahlogists) can study the shape and size of all of a mite's leg and body parts. This makes them easier to identify, notes Ron Ochoa, an acarologist at ARS' Systematic Entomology Laboratory, also in Beltsville.

Erbe, who teamed with Ochoa and others to produce the mite photos, has come up with a neat way of displaying them. He turns the photos into what he calls "box photos." These three-dimensional (3-D) boxes show all of a mite's sides--its center (located on top of the box), the left and right sides, front and rear.

Now, you can make your own 3-D box photo of a female broad mite, shown here.

All you have to do is print off a copy of the mite on page four (The image file is fairly large, so please be patient while the page opens).

Can't get enough of mites? Check out "Dust Mites in Dog Food Can Mean Trouble for Spot!"

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