Acarina

Acarina or Acari are a taxon of arachnids that contains mites and ticks. The diversity of the Acari is extraordinary and its fossil history goes back to the Devonian era. As a result, acarologists (the people who study mites and ticks) have proposed a complex set of taxonomic ranks to classify mites. In most modern treatments, the Acari is considered a subclass of Arachnida and is composed of 2-3 orders or superorders: Acariformes, Parasitiformes, and Opilioacariformes. The latter is often considered a subgroup within the Parasitiformes. The monophyly of the Acari is open to debate and the relationships of the acarine orders to other arachnids is not at all clear.