Today, Josh and I used q-tips to pluck off a lot of the mites that live on our g. oblongonata hissers. They're only a little larger than a flea. These mites are beneficial, if anything; they don't impede their development and don't cause any parasitism and can decrease allergens which are good for people with allergies to roaches, but their numbers were getting really crazy and frankly I don't like them crawling all over me after handling. :P 10-20 mites per roach is normal, but there were easily 30-50 on each one. We left a decent amount of them, but I really wanted to get a good vid and some photos of these creepy-crawlies.

These mites, gromphadorholaelaps schaeferi, help decrease the presence of a variety of molds on the cockroaches' bodies, reducing allergic responses among humans who handle them. The mites eat saliva and organic debris that collects between the cockroaches' legs, eliminating material that would foster mold growth on the insects' bodies. The mites don't appear to actually eat any mold, but they are good at preventing it. In studies, female cockroaches with mites had 64 percent fewer fungal colonies than those lacking mites. In males, the difference was 31 percent, and in nymphs, there were 24 percent fewer fungi.

The mites cannot live anywhere else but on the surface of the Madagascar hissing cockroach. Chemical cues from growing nymphs offer signals that a new host is large enough to house a colony of mites. When a host cockroach dies, the mites wander aimlessly on the carcass until they die, too.