Abird louseis anychewing louse(small, biting insects) of orderPhthirapterawhichparasitizeswarm-blooded animals, especiallybirds.Bird lice may feed onfeathers,skin,orblood.They have no wings, and their biting mouth parts distinguish them from true lice, which suck blood.[1] [2]
Almost all domestic birds are hosts for at least one species of bird louse. Chickens and other poultry are attacked by many kinds of bird lice.[2]Bird lice usually do not cause much harm to a bird unless it is unusually infested as in the case of birds with damaged bills which cannot preen themselves properly. A blood-consuming louse that infests Galápagos Hawks ismore numerous on hawks without territories,possibly because those individuals spend more time looking for food and less time preening than hawks with territories.
In such cases, their irritation may cause the bird to damage itself by scratching. In extreme cases, the infestation may even interfere with egg production and the fattening of poultry.[1]Unlike true lice, bird lice do not carry infectious diseases.[2]Havingcoevolvedwith their specific host(s),phylogeneticrelationships among bird lice are sometimes of use when trying to determine phylogenetic relationships among birds.[3]
Earlier all chewing lice were considered to form theparaphyleticorderMallophagawhile the sucking lice were thought to form the orderAnoplura.Recent reclassification (Clay, 1970) has combined these orders into the order Phthiraptera. The bird lice belong to two suborders,AmblyceraandIschnocera,although some members of these suborders do not parasitize birds and are therefore not bird lice.[4]: 2010–202
The families which parasitize birds are:[4]
- Suborder Amblycera
- FamilyMenoponidae- birds, including poultry.
- FamilyLaemobothriidae- water birds and hawks.
- FamilyRicinidae-hummingbirdsandpasserines.
- Suborder Ischnocera
- FamilyPhilopteridae- birds, including poultry.
Footnotes
edit- ^ab"Bird louse" on Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ^abc"Bird louse".How Stuff Works?.HowStuffWorks, Inc. 22 April 2008.Retrieved8 April2010.
- ^Cohen, Baker, Belchschmidt, Dittmann, Furness, Gerwin, Helbig, de Korte, Marshall, Palma, Peter, Ramli, Siebold, Willcox, Wilson and Zink (1997).Enigmatic phylogeny of skuas.Proc. Biol. Sci. 264(1379): 181–190.
- ^abGillot, C.Entomology2nd Ed. (1995) Springer,ISBN0-306-44967-6,ISBN978-0-306-44967-3.Accessed onGoogle Bookson 9 Apr 2010.
References
edit- "Bird louse".Encyclopædia BritannicaOnline 2010. Retrieved 9 April 2010.]