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In a sense, this book is an expanded version of an earlier work by this author entitled “The Siphonaptera of Canada”, published in 1949. It is extended beyond the political confines of this country and includes treatment of the fauna of Alaska and Greenland, as well as much new distributional information on the fleas of Canada, especially the Canadian north. This latter was made possible by the Northern Insect Survey (1947-1962), mostly directed by the late Dr. T.N. Freeman, which involved the establishment of about 80 field parties in the Arctic and Subarctic Regions of Canada, Alaska and Greenland.A section on flea anatomy in relation to taxonomy is followed by a key to the genera. Then the six families and 15 sub-families, 60 genera and subgenera, and 183 species and subspecies, of fleas are carefully described and illustrated. Under the description of each species is a detailed listing of all specimens available to the author, West to East. This is followed by a host-flea index providing a taxonomic list of all the species of mammals and birds from which fleas have been taken. Distribution maps have been prepared illustrating all the collection records of flea species. Sometimes the known ranges of mammal hosts are included, where there is evidence of a strong host association.

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The genus Hystrichopsylla is Holarctic in distribution; its species include the largest known fleas. Only a few of the species exhibit marked host preferences. H. talpae (Curtis), the type of the genus, occurs through much of Europe and Asia, where the favoured hosts are insectivores and small rodents. It differs from all other known species chiefly in the presence of true combs of long, pigmented spines on abdominal terga II to IV (Fig. 1). Because of the differences, Ioff and Scalon (1950, in Ioff and Scalon et al., p. 273) proposed the subgenus Hystroceras (type, H. satunini Wagn.) to contain a group of Palaearctic species (satunini Wagn., microti Scalon, and nicolai Scalon) that have the abdominal combs reduced to series of apical spinelets (Fig. 2); this taxon would include all the known Nearctic species of Hystrichopsylla. Ioff and Scalon considered Typhloceras Wagn., known only from the Palaearctic region, a third subgenus, but this interpretation will probably not be generally followed.

All known bird fleas are believed to have been derived from species that originally infested mammals. Circumstances evidently have occurred whereby representatives of species that were ordinarily the parasites of mammals became associated with buds, and were successful in establishing themselves on these hosts. These circumstances must have included some provision for isolation whereby the newly transferred colonies of fleas were not given the opportunity of becoming reassociated with the original hosts, and also were not contaminated by subsequent introductions of others of their species. Thus they were able to become adapted to an existence on the bodies and in the nests of avian hosts. The adaptations were physical as well as physiological, many bird fleas exhibiting morphological characteristics which, though not yet properly understood, apparently bear some relationship to their specialized environment.