This special issue of Experimental and Applied Acarology is critically arriving at the right time. Since Salmonella vaccination is now widespread within the poultry industry, it seems the new economic, welfare and epidemiological problem is now the poultry red mite, Dermanyssus gallinae (also called red poultry mite, poultry mite, red mite or chicken mite). In 2012 the European Commission will ban traditional cage systems to move towards enriched cages or more open systems, such as free range or barns, which unfortunately could see mite population rocketing as they would be able to hide and proliferate better under these open environments. Like with many blood-feeding arthropods the consequences of their attacks are multiple: welfare issues of birds, becoming anaemic, picking feather, becoming restless and aggressing each other; egg production going down, because of the increased fragility of the egg shell; blood staining of the eggs, usually leading to refusal by supermarket corporations; and the mites are reservoirs of—and transmit—several bacterial and viral poultry diseases, which may also have nasty effects on man. So the eradication or at least the control of this ectoparasite would greatly impact several aspects of our communities. However, acaricide products used to try controlling the poultry red mite have shown some limitations, either because mites became more and more resistant (Marangi, Cafiero et al., and Roy, Chauve et al., both in this issue), or because some products are withdrawn from the national market because of negative impacts on the environment as a side effect. The costs for prevention and control are globally impressive (Sparagano et al., this issue) and therefore control strategies are needed. The 14 papers published in this special issue (prepared by 43 co-authors from 11 countries) are highlighting the state-of-art of our knowledge about these ectoparasites, but also about research initiatives in laboratories and on farms to stop this proliferating parasite. Colleagues present papers about physical control methods (Kilpinen and Steenberg), or biological methods based on plants (George et al.), the use of predators (Lesna et al.), an immunological approach (Wright et al.), or a mixture of them (Maurer et al.). Owing to the