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The mites of the Arrenurus genus are armored mites. In addition to red species, there are green and brown ones. The species depicted could be A. bicuspidator. In many species, the males have a tail-shaped appendage, the cauda, and are clearly different from the females. Some species have a small appendage on the cauda, the petiolus, which can be vaguely seen in the photo above (the blurred yellow line at the bottom).
The species of the Arrenurus genus have a somewhat different mating. The female actively searches for a male. I myself probably saw this with A. sinuator. A mating-eager male sits with its hind legs up and the cauda somewhat raised. The female walks with its belly side against the cauda and at that moment a powerful glue is squeezed out through the cauda. With that they are glued together. The bond can last for several hours and is very strong. I tried to push these two apart at first, because I thought (without magnification) that one was trying to suck out the other, as I have seen happen with other mites. But when I tried to carefully loosen them with tweezers, that didn't work. In the photo on the left we are looking diagonally at the right bottom of the male, the conical point on the right is not a tail point, but an extra protrusion on its back.
On »this page« some more pictures of the couple.
Click on the picture on the left to see another female specimen of this mite. Found a few years earlier in the same pond, missing the corners of the abdomen. Perhaps it was an immature specimen, the undersides look almost identical
Article on mating A. manubriator by Procter & Smith
Read op http://www.ithaca.edu/hs/biology/bsmith_pubpdf/proctor_smith94.pdf