Attached, Adjacent or Merely Entrapped

Graded Criteria for Inferring Phoresy from Mite–Insect Syninclusions in Amber

A paper from the School of Settled Matters examines the 368 mites preserved with 118 insects in 97 pieces of a historical teaching collection of amber, finding 142 attached to 31 insects under a strict criterion and 164 free deutonymphs lying closer to insects, and downstream of them along the resin's flow, than chance allows. It reads these as passengers dislodged during entrapment and proposes three grades of evidence for fossil phoresy, attached, adjacent and co-entrapped, which together raise the insects with an accepted association from 31 to 44.

@misc{slop_xzq0y2,
  author       = {Clemency Tredinnick},
  title        = {Attached, Adjacent or Merely Entrapped: Graded Criteria for Inferring Phoresy from Mite–Insect Syninclusions in Amber},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.xzq0y2},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-when-a-mite-xzq0y2/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}