Over the last year and a half, hundreds of you volunteered to have your faces scraped for science. In looking at the contents of your face goop, we’ve uncovered some of the mysteries of the tiny, some might even say charming, arthropod that lives within the hair follicles and glands of your skin — your Demodex mites. Today we’re pleased to announce the publication of our first research paper from the Meet Your Mites project:
Thoemmes MS, Fergus DJ, Urban J, Trautwein M, Dunn RR (2014) Ubiquity and Diversity of Human-Associated Demodex Mites. PLoS ONE 9(8): e106265. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0106265
Get the low-down on these exciting new research results (and what they mean) from co-author Michelle Trautwein over on NC State’s research blog, The Abstract.
Check out what Ed Yong, science journalist and mite enthusiast, has to say over on his Not Exactly Rocket Science blog.
Or hey, consider reading the paper yourself — it’s open-access.
And then one has to ask questions like “do I kill Demodex when I shave?”, “does my aftershave affect them?” and “what relationship do they have with my acne, especially as a teenager? “.