Disentangling Species Boundaries and the Evolution of Habitat Specialization for the Ecologically Diverse Mite Family Acaridae by Pamela Murillo-Rojas A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) in the University of Michigan 2019 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Thomas F. Duda Jr, Chair Assistant Professor Alison R. Davis-Rabosky Associate Professor Johannes Foufopoulos Professor Emeritus Barry M. OConnor Pamela Murillo-Rojas
[email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-7823-7302 © Pamela Murillo-Rojas 2019 Dedication To my husband Juan M. for his support since day one, for leaving all his life behind to join me in this journey and because you always believed in me ii Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to say thanks to the University of Michigan, the Rackham Graduate School and mostly to the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology for all their support during all these years. To all the funding sources of the University of Michigan that made possible to complete this dissertation and let me take part of different scientific congresses through Block Grants, Rackham Graduate Student Research Grants, Rackham International Research Award (RIRA), Rackham One Term Fellowship and the Hinsdale-Walker scholarship. I also want to thank Fulbright- LASPAU fellowship, the University of Costa Rica (OAICE-08-CAB-147-2013), and Consejo Nacional para Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas (CONICIT-Costa Rica, FI- 0161-13) for all the financial support. I would like to thank, all specialists that help me with the identification of some hosts for the mites: Brett Ratcliffe at the University of Nebraska State Museum, Lincoln, NE, identified the dynastine scarabs.