Dennis Patton, a horticulturist with Johnson County Kansas State University Extension, said oak tree itch mites have been taking a bite out of people in both eastern Kansas and Missouri in unprecedented numbers this year and last.

“When you see them blown up big, they almost look like this little alien type creature out of Star Trek, but you’re not going to see them on your skin,” he said.

Nobody is quite sure why there’s been such a big outbreak of the mites and bites, Patton said. The last time such an influx of the mites occurred was more than a decade ago, and it was isolated to eastern Kansas and Nebraska, Patton said. And yet, the mites have clearly migrated east and become even more of a nuisance this year, he said.

The mites’ life cycles are just as complex and incognito as their bites. They can’t survive without oak tree leaves. But it’s a complicated symbiotic relationship involving another pest.

In the spring, tiny wasp-like insects lay their eggs on oak leaves with a small sting. The sting to the leaf deforms the surrounding plant cell tissue. That causes the leaves to grow small mole-like formations called “galls” that house the gnat larvae growing inside.