You know the ones I mean. The ones that seem to live pretty much primarily on brick walls. What on earth are they?
Well, that was quick. Thanks, Casey. That’s been bugg- er, bothering me for awhile now.
Red spider mites, I thought, live on plants.
I’m just going with what my grandfather told me when I was a kid. Aside from the fact that the hill in his yard “looks steeper than it really is, now get mowing boy”, he never misled me. If you can’t trust an old transplanted Cajun, who can you trust?
AFAIK, they are red spider mites.
I believe they eat the fungi and/or moss that grow on brick and rocks.
Colibri would be the man in the know about this.
I was gonna say spider mites, because that’s what we always called 'em. But then I tried to google spider mites to get a picture of what I thought the OP was about and my skin started crawling so badly I had to give it up.
They do damage to greenhouse plants; causing the leaves to turn yellow and dull - I’m therefore inclined to suggest that their diet at least includes living plant material. They dislike humidity, apparently, and can be controlled by misting with water.
I always wondered why they swarm on cement and concrete. I figured there must be a good explanation, but it hadn’t occured to me they were feeding on some moss or fungus I couldn’t see. Hell, I can barely see them.