Face Mite (IMAGE)
Caption
This is another view of a Demodex folliculorum face mite, the focus of the new international study. Results show that, in some cases, African Americans who had been living in the US for generations still hosted African mites. These results suggest that some mite populations are better able to survive and reproduce on hosts from certain geographic regions. Differences in mite lineages, the authors say, are consistent with the divergence of human populations and support the 'Out of Africa'; hypothesis. This widely accepted theory about the origins of humanity states that every living human today is descended from a group that evolved in Africa and dispersed into the wider world. Though the study results suggest that mites predated the dawn of modern humans, Dr. Michelle Trautwein from the California Academy of Sciences says that mites were likely along for that much later series of journeys off the continent.
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© California Academy of Sciences
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