http://www.extento.hawaii.edu/kbase/Crop/Type/b_phoeni.htm
and here is a picture
Here is the text
The false spider mite has been revealed as the first known animal to make do with only one set of chromosomes, challenging traditional theories of evolution.
The cells of most multicellular animals are "diploid" - they carry two copies of each chromosome. This makes evolutionary sense: if a mutation strikes a gene on one chromosome, a flawless version on the other can compensate. But no one has ever found an animal where both sexes are "haploid" - carrying a single set of unpaired chromosomes.
Until now, that is. A team led by Andrew Weeks of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has shown that the false spider mite Brevipalpus phoenicis, a pest of crops such as citrus fruits, tea and palms, fits the bill. "It seems that in biology there are exceptions to every rule," says Weeks.
"Never before has a female from the animal kingdom been found to be exclusively haploid," he says. Almost all the mites are female and produce only female offspring from unfertilised eggs.
"This is quite a surprise - it goes against the dogma I was taught," says Sarah Otto, an evolutionary biologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Because no all-haploid species had been discovered, biologists assumed that the strategy couldn't work.
Evolutionary advantage
The adult cells of false spider mites contain two chromosomes. But before Weeks's study, no one knew whether these chromosomes were similar, suggesting a diploid state, or unrelated, suggesting a haploid state.
Using standard sequencing techniques, Weeks's team found the mites' chromosomes to be very different. As far as the researchers could tell, none of the mites carried two identical copies of any particular gene. They conclude that the species is exclusively haploid.
Weeks thinks being exclusively haploid might give the animals an evolutionary advantage. In the long term, their lack of chromosome copies to compensate for harmful mutations might help the species by ensuring that dangerous mutations kill the individuals carrying them rather than spreading down the generations.
This genetic state may be rare simply because diploidy was "frozen" early in evolution and other animals haven't had the opportunity to make the transition.
Weeks believes the mites once consisted of diploid females and haploid males. But he has shown that infection by an as yet unclassified bacterium feminised any rare males in the wild, possibly by blocking the secretion of a crucial male hormone.
The offspring of these infected mites would eventually develop into haploid females, leaving few males for the diploid females to mate with.
The V.P. should be credited with the discovery that Leahy is haploid, and merely simplified his hypotheses to layman terms.
I thought that Darwinian dogma excluded goals.