Thus, this book is timely in compiling and synthesizing information that is now available on these behaviorally fascinating, economically important mites. At the same time, the actual and potential economic importance of eriophyoids continues to grow worldwide, and their success in colonizing new regions makes them an ongoing quarantine threat in many parts of the world (a new case in point, as this is written, is the note in Florida Entomologist by Pefia and Denmark (1996) on the recently confirmed presence in Florida of Tegolophus perseaflorae Keifer, a neotropical pest of avocado). Yet, major regions of the world remain virtually untouched in surveying for these mites, such that Amrine and Stasny (1994), in their new comprehensive Catalog of the Eriophyoidea of the World, estimated that not more than 5 percent of the world species of Eriophyoidea have been described! Just as the number of described taxa of Eriophyoidea has doubled during the last two decades, so has our knowledge of the biology, ecology and importance of these mites expanded. During only the 20 years since then, approximately 1000 more species and nearly 115 more genera have been described, giving testimony to how poorly known and taxon-rich this group is. At the time of the last compilation of world knowledge about eriophyoid mites in the book Mites Injurious to Economic Plants by Jeppson, Keifer and Baker (1975), some 1800 species in 115 genera were known. Behavioral and life cycle modifications correlated with these structural changes reflect the adaptation and evolution of this lineage into a disparity of highly host-specific forms that, to date, have bewildered any meaningful classification of them. Despite the reductive structural simplicity evident among even the most primitive extant members of the Eriophyoidea, the more derived subgroups have augmented their body plan secondarily in a variety of ways, either for !iving in closely confined spaces like sheaths, buds, erinea and galls or moreso for living, freely exposed, on plant surfaces. Moreover, they surpass these other groups in the degree to which they are specialized on their host plants, making them superior in their potential as weed control agents. They surpass all other groups of phytophagous mites in the extent of their morphological and biological specialization for obligate phytophagy. Among the Acari eriophyoid m i t e s - the Eriophyoidea or Tetrapodili- are second only' to the spider mites (Tetranychidae) in their economic importance as plant pests throughout the world.

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