Acarology has been associated with The Ohio State University since Professor G. W. Wharton arrived as chair of the former Department of Entomology and Zoology in 1961. The Institute of Acarology was established by Dr. Wharton at Duke University in 1951 and continued at the University of Maryland from 1954-61. The Institute became synonymous with the Acarology Summer Program. As a result of the Summer Program, Dr. Wharton became a founding father of the discipline of acarology. He played a  key role in organizing the First International Congress of Acarology at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, in 1963. Along with Dr. E. W. Baker he wrote the first acarology text, An Introduction to Acarology in 1952. His research on dust mites and water balance physiology was revolutionary.

The Acarology Summer Program typically attracts 30-40 participants, about half from other countries. Over the years many outstanding guest lecturers have helped the OSU staff in offering intense courses in general acarology, soil mites, agricultural acarology, medical-veterinary acarology and the Parasitengona.

Catherine Hoogstraal Walker, sister of the famous tick researcher Dr. Harry Hoogstraal, established an endowment in her brother's honor. Funds from this generous gift support participation by a student each year who shows potential to contribute significantly to acarology.

Acarologist Rodger Mitchell was recruited by Dr. Wharton to become a professor at OSU in 1969. Dr. Donald E. Johnston joined the department in the early 1960s as a doctoral student with Dr. Wharton from Maryland. In 1976, Dr. Johnston became the laboratory's director after Dr. Wharton's retirement. During these years Johnston earned the reputation of being the finest teacher of acarology in the world.

In 1978, Dr. Glen Needham, a tick physiologist, came to OSU as an assistant professor. W. Calvin Welbourn, a chigger expert, arrived as the collection's second curator following Gilford Ide.  Dr. Needham along with Dr. Robert E. Page, Jr. organized the first International Conference on Africanized Honey Bees and Bee Mites in 1987. This meeting marked the beginning of collaborative research between the Rothenbuhler Bee Laboratory and the Acarology Lab on parasitic mites of honey bees. Needham, Page, Mercedes Delfinado-Baker and Clive E. Bowman produced a proceedings book from the conference the following year.

In 1995, the bee-mite work received a boost via a four year grant from the USDA (Binational Agriculture Research and Development) to develop an integrated pest management  program for mite control in the U.S. and Israel. A former graduate of the department, Dr. William A. Bruce, was a collaborator on the project from his USDA lab in Beltsville, MD. The OSU portion of this study was orchestrated by another OSU graduate, Dr. Diana Sammataro, in collaboration with Dr. Jim Tew at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, and Agricultural Technical Institute Bee Laboratory in Wooster, Ohio.  Dr. Sammataro is now at Penn State.

Currently the Acarology Laboratory is working with the OSU Department of Internal Medicine to develop a preventive strategy for the control of dust mites in the homes of asthmatics. This year-long clinical trial is novel in the use of a pesticide to kill mites and reduce their antigen level in the home.

Geneticist Dr. Dana Wrensch joined the lab in 1989 and invigorated the revamped biology program. Her book with Dr. M. Ebert, Evolution of Sex Ratio in Mites and Insects, contains the latest ideas on this fascinating subject. She was the co-principal investigator with Dr. John Briggs on an internationally funded project to control spider mites on tea in Indonesia. This project eventually involved Dr. Johnston, Dr. Sydney Young and Donald Yehling in our department.

In service to our discipline the lab has maintained a world directory of acarologists for more than 20 years, which now lists some two thousand individuals. A significant contribution to acarology, the IXth International Congress of Acarology was held in 1994 at OSU. This meeting attracted a hundred more registrants than any prior congress with 400 participants. A two-volume proceedings was published. Roger Mitchell emerged from retirement to ensure completion of these contributions dedicated to Dr. Wharton and Dr. Johnston. Drs. Horn, Welbourn and Needham were co-editors of the two books totaling about 1,400 pages.  Dr. Johnston, the congress president, died unexpectedly just after the conference at the age of 59. Fortunately, OSU realized the importance of this position to the lab and acarology as a whole, and in July 1996 Dr. Hans Klompen was hired as the new acarine systematist.

The Acarology Collection was housed in a very small room in the Biological Sciences Building from 1962 until 1993, when all of the collections in the college were moved to the new Museum of Biological Diversity.  Dr. Welbourn coordinated this task for the entire college and for the first time the reprint collection and preserved specimens were housed in one modern facility. Current estimates of holdings are 150,000 determined specimens, including many holo- and paratypes. Both alcoholic and slide preparations are present as well. This is a world collection with outstanding representations of soil Acari from North America, Europe and the Neotropics. The European collection is  the most extensive in the New World. Recent important additions include material from Africa and Indonesia, and extensive collections from caves of North America. Other special strengths are a superb collection of velvet mites, chiggers and water mites, and the various groups parasitic on mammals, including Ixodid ticks from Africa. A comprehensive library accompanies the collection and is especially strong in European and Russian literature up to 1978. Future plans are to use the internet home page for acarology to give others access to our holdings and information.