Seven species of chewing lice (Insecta: Phthiraptera) were found on five species of bulbuls (Passeriformes: Pycnonotidae)in northern Vietnam. Three new species of the genera Brueelia and Philopteroides are described; they and their type hostsare: Brueelia flavala ex Hemixos flavala Blyth, 1845 B. cucphuongensis ex Pycnonotus finlaysoni Strickland, 1844 andPhilopteroides flavala ex Hemixos flavala Blyth, 1845. First records of chewing lice from Hemixos castanonotus Swin-hoe, 1870 and Iole propinqua (Oustalet, 1903), and a new host record for Myrsidea ochracei and Sturnidoecus sp. are also included.
The Philopterus Complex includes several lineages of lice that occur on birds. The complex includes the genera Philopterus (Nitzsch, 1818; Psocodea: Philopteridae), Philopteroides (Mey, 2004; Psocodea: Philopteridae), and many other lineages that have sometimes been regarded as separate genera. Only a few studies have investigated the phylogeny of this complex, all of which are based on morphological data. Here we evaluate the utility of nuclear and mitochondrial loci for recovering the phylogeny within this group. We obtained phylogenetic trees from 39 samples of the Philopterus Complex (Psocodea: Philopteridae), using sequences of two nuclear (hyp and TMEDE6) and one mitochondrial (COI) marker. We evaluated trees derived from these genes individually as well as from concatenated sequences. All trees show 20 clearly demarcated taxa (i.e., putative species) divided into five well-supported clades. Percent sequence divergence between putative species (~5–30%) for the COI gene tended to be much higher than those for the nuclear genes (~1–15%), as expected. In cases where species are described, the lineages identified based on molecular divergence correspond to morphologically defined species. In some cases, species that are host generalists exhibit additional underlying genetic variation and such cases need to be explored by further future taxonomic revisions of the Philopterus Complex.
A total of 239 individuals of 50 bird species were examined for chewing lice (Insecta: Phthiraptera) in southern Vietnam. Fifty-six birds of 20 species were parasitised by 15 species of lice belonging to 10 genera from two suborders, Amblycera: Menacanthus, Meromenopon, Myrsidea, and Ischnocera: Alcedoecus, Brueelia, Cuculicola, Meropoecus, Penenirmus, Philopteroides and Philopterus. Thirteen louse samples from Passeriformes were identified to genus only because they contain inadequate material. A total of 29 host-louse associations were found, of which nine are new, including: (1) two new species of the genus Brueelia, which are described and named in this paper: Brueelia binhchauensis from Megalaima lineata (Vieillot, 1816) (Piciformes: Megalaimidae), and Brueelia malacocincla from Malacocincla abbotti Blyth, 1845 (Passeriformes: Pellorneidae); (2) first records of lice from Cyornis hainanus (Ogilvie-Grant, 1900); and (3) the first record of Myrsidea claytoni Hellenthal & Price, 2003 from Cymbirhynchus macrorhynchos (Gmelin, 1788) (Passeriformes: Eurylaimidae), here regarded as a case of natural host-switching. A portion of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene for some species of chewing lice was sequenced in order to assess their genetic divergences.
Thirteen species of chewing lice (Insecta: Phthiraptera) were found on 46 wild passerines of 10 species in Cuc PhuongNational Park in northern Vietnam. Three new species of the genera Myrsidea and Brueelia are described; they and theirtype hosts are: Myrsidea annae ex Schoeniparus rufogularis (Mandelli, 1873), Brueelia hrabali ex Macronous gularis(Horsfield, 1822) and Brueelia neodaumae ex Zoothera dauma (Latham, 1790). First records of chewing lice from Seril-ophus lunatus (Gould, 1834), Stachyris nigriceps Blyth, 1844, Niltava davidi La Touche, 1907 and Alcippe morrisonia Swinhoe, 1863, and a new host record for Menacanthus nogoma Uchida, 1926 are also included.
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