''Strigiphilus'' is a genus of chewing louse in the suborder
Ischnocera
Ischnocera is a large parvorder of lice from the infraorder Phthiraptera. The parvorder consists of Mallophaga, chewing lice, which feed on the feathers and skin debris of birds. Many species of Ischnocera have evolved an elongated body shape. T ...
. It was
circumscribed In geometry, a circumscribed circle for a set of points is a circle passing through each of them. Such a circle is said to ''circumscribe'' the points or a polygon formed from them; such a polygon is said to be ''inscribed'' in the circle.
* Circum ...
in 1910 by
Eric Mjöberg
Eric Georg Mjöberg (6 August 1882 – 8 July 1938) was a Swedish Zoology, zoologist and Ethnography, ethnographer who led the first Swedish scientific expeditions to Australia in the early 1900s, and worked in Indonesia. The plant ''Vaccinium ...
.
Taxonomic history
Mjöberg initially circumscribed ''Strigiphilus'' as a subgenus of the genus he referred to as ''Docophorus''
(now known as ''
Philopterus'').
In a 1966 paper,
Theresa Clay
Theresa Rachel "Tess" Clay (7 February 1911 – 17 March 1995) was an English entomologist. She was introduced to zoology by her older relative, the ornithologist and adventurer Richard Meinertzhagen, with whom she had an unusually close relati ...
recognized 29 species and grouped them into the following nine
species group
In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each oth ...
s:
* ''
Strigiphilus rostratus'' group
* ''
Strigiphilus heterocerus'' group
* ''
Strigiphilus cursor'' group
* ''
Strigiphilus crenulatus'' group
* ''
Strigiphilus macrogenitalis'' group
* ''
Strigiphilus strigis'' group
* ''
Strigiphilus siamensis'' group
* ''
Strigiphilus ketupae'' group
* ''
Strigiphilus cursitans'' group
The largest group is the ''S. curstans'' group.
Hosts
''Strigiphilus'' is the only genus of Ischnocera to exclusively
parasitize
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives (at least some of the time) on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The ento ...
owls.
Species
, there are approximately fifty species of ''Strigiphilus''.
Species include:
* ''
Strigiphilus garylarsoni
''Strigiphilus garylarsoni'' is a species of chewing louse found only on owls. The species was first described by biologist Dale H. Clayton in 1990, who named it after cartoonist Gary Larson.
Its type host is the Northern white-faced owl (''Pt ...
''
(''cursitans'' group)
References
Further reading
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*
Lice
Parasites of birds
{{louse-stub