Four new species of Brueelia Kéler, 1936 (Phthiraptera: Ischnocera) from African hosts, with a redescription of Nirmus bicurvatus Piaget, 1880

Abstract

Four new species of Brueelia Kéler, 1936 are described and illustrated. All of them parasitize African endemic host species in the families Passeridae, Ploceidae, and Estrildidae (Passeriformes). They are: Brueelia pofadderensis sp. nov. ex Passer melanurus damarensis Reichenow, 1902 and P. m. vicinus Clancey, 1958; B. semiscalaris sp. nov. ex Granatina granatina (Linnaeus, 1758); B. sima sp. nov. ex Malimbus nitens (Gray, 1831); B. terpsichore sp. nov. ex Euplectes jacksoni (Sharpe, 1891) and E. progne delamerei (Shelley, 1903). In addition, Brueelia bicurvata (Piaget, 1880) is redescribed and reillustrated from non-type material. A summary of all published records of lice in the Brueelia complex from Africa since 1980 is provided. We also estimate the unknown diversity of African species of Brueelia based on an index of host specificity calculated for each host family independently. The unknown diversity is estimated to be over 1000 species of Brueelia from African hosts, compared to the < 50 species in this genus currently recorded from Africa.

Hitchhiking into the future on a fly: Toward a better understanding of phoresy and avian louse evolution (Phthiraptera) by screening bird carcasses for phoretic lice on hippoboscid flies (Diptera)

“…This meant that a comparatively low number of reports cover louse‐hippoboscid phoresy in sufficient detail to assess the importance of phoresy for louse‐host specificity and co‐speciation between lice and bird hosts. This is unfortunate given that bird lice are species‐rich (Price et al, 2003; Gustafsson, Zou, et al, 2019) with many bird species hosting several louse species. This makes it likely that the number of louse species will eventually exceed the number of bird species.…”

The ischnoceran chewing lice (Phthiraptera: Ischnocera) of bulbuls (Aves: Passeriformes: Pycnonotidae), with descriptions of 18 new species

“…As most of the bulbuls in the African clade are rainforest birds, this may explain the lack of records of Brueelia from bulbul genera endemic to Africa. Additional sampling of more birds, especially in the drier regions of Africa, is sorely needed (as stressed by Gustafsson et al 2019d).…”

Riding into the future on a fly: toward a better understanding of phoresy and avian lice evolution (Phthiraptera) by screening bird carcasses for phoretic lice on hippoboscid flies (Diptera)

“…This meant that a comparatively low number of reports cover louse-hippoboscid phoresy in sufficient detail to assess the importance of phoresy for louse-host specificity and the co-speciation between avian lice and bird hosts. This is unfortunate given that bird lice are species-rich (Price et al, 2003;Gustafsson et al, 2019b) with many bird species hosting several louse species which makes it likely that the number of louse species will eventually exceed the number of bird species. Despite the small number of published records, we were able to reconstruct two large species interaction networks that connect 87 species of birds, 16 species of flies, and 18 species of lice.…”