Louse
Phthiraptera Temporal range:
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Light micrograph of Fahrenholzia pinnata | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Arthropoda |
Class: | Insecta |
Order: | Psocodea |
Suborder: | Troctomorpha |
Infraorder: | Nanopsocetae |
Parvorder: | Phthiraptera Haeckel, 1896 |
Clades[1] | |
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Louse (pl.: lice) is the common name for any member of the
Lice are
Chewing lice live among the hairs or feathers of their host and feed on skin and debris, whereas sucking lice pierce the host's skin and feed on blood and other secretions. They usually spend their whole life on a single host, cementing their eggs, called nits, to hairs or feathers. The eggs hatch into nymphs, which moult three times before becoming fully grown, a process that takes about four weeks. Genetic evidence indicates that lice are a highly modified lineage of Psocoptera (now called Psocodea), commonly known as booklice, barklice or barkflies. The oldest known fossil lice are from the Cretaceous.[4]
Humans host two species of louse—the head louse and the body louse are subspecies of Pediculus humanus; and the pubic louse, Pthirus pubis. The body louse has the smallest genome of any known insect; it has been used as a model organism and has been the subject of much research. Lice were ubiquitous in human society until at least the Middle Ages. They appear in folktales, songs such as The Kilkenny Louse House, and novels such as James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. They commonly feature in the psychiatric disorder delusional parasitosis. A louse was one of the early subjects of microscopy, appearing in Robert Hooke's 1667 book, Micrographia.
Morphology and diversity
Lice are divided into two groups: sucking lice, which obtain their nourishment from feeding on the
Sucking lice range in length from 0.5 to 5 mm (1⁄64 to 13⁄64 in). They have narrow heads and oval, flattened bodies. They have no
Chewing lice are also flattened and can be slightly larger than sucking lice, ranging in length from 0.5 to 6 mm (1⁄64 to 15⁄64 in). They are similar to sucking lice in form but the head is wider than the thorax and all species have compound eyes. There are no ocelli and the mouthparts are adapted for chewing. The antennae have three to five segments and are slender in the suborder Ischnocera, but club-shaped in the suborder Amblycera. The legs are short and robust, and terminated by one or two claws. Some species of chewing lice house symbiotic bacteria in bacteriocytes in their bodies. These may assist in digestion because if the insect is deprived of them, it will die. Lice are usually cryptically coloured to match the fur or feathers of the host.[7][9] A louse's color varies from pale beige to dark gray; however, if feeding on blood, it may become considerably darker.
Female lice are usually more common than males, and some species are parthenogenetic, with young developing from unfertilized eggs. A louse's egg is commonly called a nit. Many lice attach their eggs to their hosts' hair with specialized saliva; the saliva/hair bond is very difficult to sever without specialized products. Lice inhabiting birds, however, may simply leave their eggs in parts of the body inaccessible to preening, such as the interior of feather shafts. Living louse eggs tend to be pale whitish, whereas dead louse eggs are yellower.[5] Lice are exopterygotes, being born as miniature versions of the adult, known as nymphs. The young moult three times before reaching the final adult form, usually within a month after hatching.[5]
Humans host three different kinds of lice:
Ecology
The average number of lice per host tends to be higher in large-bodied bird species than in small ones.[11] Lice have an aggregated distribution across bird individuals, i.e. most lice live on a few birds, while most birds are relatively free of lice. This pattern is more pronounced in territorial than in colonial—more social—bird species.[12] Host organisms that dive under water to feed on aquatic prey harbor fewer taxa of lice.[13][14] Bird taxa that are capable of exerting stronger antiparasitic defense—such as stronger T cell immune response or larger uropygial glands—harbor more taxa of Amblyceran lice than others.[15][16] Reductions in the size of host populations may cause a long-lasting reduction of louse taxonomic richness,[17] for example, birds introduced into New Zealand host fewer species of lice there than in Europe.[18][19] Louse sex ratios are more balanced in more social hosts and more female-biased in less social hosts, presumably due to the stronger isolation among louse subpopulations (living on separate birds) in the latter case.[20] The extinction of a species results in the extinction of its host-specific lice. Host-switching is a random event that would seem very rarely likely to be successful, but speciation has occurred over evolutionary time-scales so it must be successfully accomplished sometimes.[17]
Lice may reduce host life expectancy if the infestation is heavy,
Evolution
Phthiraptera lice are members of
Cladogram showing the position of Phthiraptera within Psocodea:[1]
Psocodea |
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Classification
Phthiraptera is clearly a
- suckinglice, occurring on mammals exclusively
- Rhynchophthirina: parasites of elephants and warthogs
- Ischnocera: mostly avian chewing lice, with one family parasitizing mammals
- Amblycera: a primitive suborder of chewing lice, widespread on birds, and also occurring on South American and Australian mammals
Upon finding that Phthiraptera was nested within
Nearly 5,000 species of louse have been identified, about 4,000 being parasitic on birds and 800 on mammals. Lice are present on every continent in all the habitats that their host animals occupy.[30] They are found even in the Antarctic, where penguins carry 15 species of lice (in the genera Austrogonoides and Nesiotinus).[31] The oldest known record of the group is Megamenopon rasnitsyni from the Eocene of Germany, but it is essentially a modern form, belonging to Amblycera, so the group as a whole likely has an origin in the Mesozoic.[27]
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Ricinus bombycillae, an amblyceran louse from a Bohemian waxwing
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Trinoton anserinum, an amblyceran louse from a mute swan
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Bovicola limbata, an ischnoceran louse from goats. The species is sexually dimorphic, with the male smaller than the female.
Phylogeny
Lice have been the subject of significant DNA research in the 2000s that led to discoveries on human evolution. The three species of sucking lice that parasitize human beings belong to two genera, Pediculus and Pthirus: head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis), body lice (Pediculus humanus humanus), and pubic lice (Pthirus pubis). Human head and body lice (genus Pediculus) share a common ancestor with chimpanzee lice, while pubic lice (genus Pthirus) share a common ancestor with gorilla lice. Using phylogenetic and cophylogenetic analysis, Reed et al. hypothesized that Pediculus and Pthirus are sister taxa and monophyletic.[32] In other words, the two genera descended from the same common ancestor. The age of divergence between Pediculus and its common ancestor is estimated to be 6-7 million years ago, which matches the age predicted by chimpanzee-hominid divergence.[32] Because parasites rely on their hosts, host–parasite cospeciation events are likely.
Genetic evidence suggests that human ancestors acquired pubic lice from gorillas approximately 3-4 million years ago.[32] Unlike the genus Pediculus, the divergence in Pthirus does not match the age of host divergence that likely occurred 7 million years ago. Reed et al. propose a Pthirus species host-switch around 3-4 million years ago. While it is difficult to determine if a parasite–host switch occurred in evolutionary history, this explanation is the most parsimonious (containing the fewest evolutionary changes).[32]
Additionally, the DNA differences between head lice and body lice provide corroborating evidence that humans used clothing between 80,000 and 170,000 years ago, before leaving Africa.[33] Human head and body lice occupy distinct ecological zones: head lice live and feed on the scalp, while body lice live on clothing and feed on the body. Because body lice require clothing to survive, the divergence of head and body lice from their common ancestor provides an estimate of the date of introduction of clothing in human evolutionary history.[33][34]
The mitochondrial genome of the human species of the body louse (
In human culture
In social history
Lice have been intimately associated with human society throughout history. In the
Robert Hooke's 1667 book, Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and Inquiries thereupon, illustrated a human louse, drawn as seen down an early microscope.[40]
In 1935 the Harvard medical researcher Hans Zinsser wrote the book Rats, Lice and History, alleging that both body and head lice transmit typhus between humans.[43] Despite this, the modern view is that only the body louse can transmit the disease.[44]
Soldiers in the trenches of the
In the psychiatric disorder delusional parasitosis, patients express a persistent irrational fear of animals such as lice and mites, imagining that they are continually infested and complaining of itching, with "an unshakable false belief that live organisms are present in the skin".[46]
In science
The human body louse Pediculus humanus humanus has (2010) the smallest insect
In literature and folklore
James Joyce's 1939 book Finnegans Wake has the character Shem the Penman infested with "foxtrotting fleas, the lieabed lice, ... bats in his belfry".[51]
Clifford E. Trafzer's A
The Irish songwriter John Lyons (b. 1934) wrote the popular[53] song The Kilkenny Louse House. The song contains the lines "Well we went up the stairs and we put out the light, Sure in less than five minutes, I had to show fight. For the fleas and the bugs they collected to march, And over me stomach they formed a great arch". It has been recorded by Christie Purcell (1952), Mary Delaney on From Puck to Appleby (2003), and the Dubliners on Double Dubliners (1972) among others.[53][54]
Robert Burns dedicated a poem to the louse, inspired by witnessing one on a lady's bonnet in church: "Ye ugly, creepin, blastid wonner, Detested, shunn'd, by saint and sinner, How dare ye set your fit upon her, sae fine lady! Gae somewhere else, and seek your dinner on some poor body." John Milton in Paradise Lost mentioned the biblical plague of lice visited upon pharaoh: "Frogs, lice, and flies must all his palace fill with loathed intrusion, and filled all the land." John Ray recorded a Scottish proverb, "Gie a beggar a bed and he'll repay you with a Louse." In Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Thersites compares Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon, to a louse: "Ask me not what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus."[55]
Woodlouse
The name
See also
References
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- ^ Rasnitsyn AP, Zherikhin VV (1999). "First fossil chewing louse from the lower Cretaceous of Baissa, Transbaikalia (Insecta, Pediculida= Phthiriaptera, Saurodectidae fam. n.)". Russian Entomological Journal. 8 (4): 253–5.
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The Bear-men were to be her Experimental Philosophers, the Bird-men her Astronomers, the Fly- Worm- and Fish-men her Natural Philosophers, the Ape-men her Chymists, the Satyrs her Galenick Physicians, the Fox-men her Politicians, the Spider- and Lice-men her Mathematicians, the Jackdaw- Magpie- and Parrot-men her Orators and Logicians, the Gyants her Architects, &c.
- ^ Cavendish M (1668). The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World. A. Maxwell.
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- ^ Altschuler DZ (1990). "Zinsser, Lice and History". HeadLice.org. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
- ^ Evans RJ. "The Great Unwashed". Gresham College. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
- ^ Weinstein P (26 February 2013). "'The Great Unwashed': Entomophobia/Delusionary Parasitosis; Illusionary Parasitosis". The Great Plagues: Epidemics in History from the Middle Ages to the Present Day. University of Sydney Department of Medical Entomology. Archived from the original on 17 May 2016. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
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- ^ White W (1859). Notes & Queries. Oxford University Press. pp. 275–276.
- ^ Pierce H (2004). "Unseemly pictures: political graphic satire in England, c. 1600-c. 1650" (PDF). University of York.
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- ^ a b Carroll J. "Songs of Clare: The Kilkenny Louse House". Clare Library. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
- ^ Scott B (2013). "My Colleen by the Shore" (PDF). Veteran. Retrieved 25 October 2015.
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- ^ "Woodlouse". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
External links
- National Pesticide Information Center – Understanding and Controlling Lice
- body and head lice on the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Featured Creatures Web site
- crab louse on the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Featured Creatures Web site
- Pediculus humanus capitis head louse facts, myths, life cycle at MetaPathogen
- Parasitic Insects, Mites and Ticks: Genera of Medical and Veterinary Importance Wikibooks