Surveys of domestic mites were conducted in living-and bedrooms of 20 concrete-built apartments in and around Nagoya City, from September 1983 to June 1984 at approximately three-month intervals. Multiple regression technique was first applied to elucidate the influence of housing conditions on the prevalence of mites, and then the resultant standard partial regression coefficients were used as explanatory variables for the cluster analysis of mites and housing conditions. The mites were largely classified into two groups, regardless of clustering methods; Ward's, median and furtherest neighbour methods. Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus and Cheyletidae formed one cluster. These mites seemed to be better adapted to a relatively humid environment, since they had positive correlation with family size and air-conditioning and negative correlation with age of house, floor level, and house-cleaning frequency. The rest of mites, D. farinae, Haplochthonius simplex, Tarsonemidae, Cosmochthonius reticulatus, Glycyphagidae, and Acaridae formed the other cluster. Of these mites, C. reticulatus and Glycyphagidae, and Tarsonemidae, H. simplex and Acaridae were classified into two subgroups. However, the position of D. farinae in the dendrograms varied by the methods applied. The reason for this was considered that there were no significant factors influencing the prevalence of D. farinae in the apartments surveyed in this study. The housing conditions were also classified into two groups. One cluster consisted of family size, air-conditioning, and floor level. The other cluster consisted of the number of rooms, flooring score, type of bedding, working status of housewife, age of house, and house-cleaning frequency. These results suggested that the prevalence of domestic mites in homes is a reflection of the interrelationship between the biological characteristics of mites, especially their humidity requirements, and degree of humidity in homes largely influenced by house-hold activities, dwelling space and distance from the ground surface.
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