Think your commute’s rough? Just be glad you’re not a hummingbird flower mite. When their mode of transit arrives, these tiny tropical arachnids—smaller than the period at the end of this sentence—have one or two seconds to board. When they arrive at their destination, they get another instant to disembark, which requires them to run, for their size, faster than a cheetah. Oh, and if they get off at the wrong stop? They’ll probably die alone. Still, as these photos show, hummingbird flower mites ride in style on some of the flashiest birds in the world. Wildlife researcher and photographer Sean Graesser used a Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens to capture the detailed shots of mites on hummingbird beaks in Costa Rica this past winter. The relationship between the hummingbirds and their eight-legged passengers is a budding research interest for Graesser, who in 2010 co-founded the Nicoya Peninsula Research Station, a volunteer-based facility on Costa Rica’s...