The primary intent of the book is to introduce an array of beautiful problems in a variety of subjects quickly, pithily and completely rigorously to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. The book takes a number of specific problems and solves them, the needed tools developed along the way in the context of the particular problems.

Although the ancestral home of chelicerates was the sea, the vast majority of modern species live on land. Most students of spiders and mites also restrict themselves to terrestrial habitats. However, a surprising number of mites (Arachnida: Acari) have returned to a watery existence.