Occurrence of the louse fly Ornithoctona erythrocephala Leach (1817) (Diptera: Hippoboscidae) on a free-living red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata)

Abstract

The aim of this study was to report, for the first time, the occurrence of the hippoboscid fly Ornithoctona erythrocephala on a red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata). A Diptera specimen was found among the feathers of a free-living red-legged seriema, which was referred to necropsy at the Wild Animal Pathology Service, UNESP Jaboticabal. The fly was collected, stored in absolute alcohol, and shipped to the Institute of Biosciences of the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul for proper identification. Based on morphological characters, the specimen was identified as a female of Ornithoctona erythrocephala. This study provides a report on a new host for O. erythrocephala.

A new haemosporidian parasite from the Red-legged Seriema Cariama cristata (Cariamiformes, Cariamidae)

“…are vectored by mosquitoes (Culicidae) with the exception of species from the subgenus Paraplasmodium (parasites of lizards), which are vectored by phlebotomid flies (Psychodidae: Phlebotominae) ( Ayala, 1971 ; Perkins, 2014 ). Unfortunately, very little is known about dipterans that feed on Red-legged Seriemas, with the exception of a record of the louse fly Ornithoctona erythrocephala (Hippoboscidae: Ornithomyiinae) parasitizing this host in Brazil ( Silva et al, 2021 ); it seems reasonable to assume that Red-legged Seriemas are also routinely parasitized by mosquitoes, which are abundant in the biomes occupied by this species (including at the type locality of H. pulcher , subj. obs.).…”

Unique Host-Parasite Relationships from Wildlife and Pets at a Zoological Medicine Service at Central Oklahoma

“…An immature broad-winged hawk was found at Chandler, OK (Lincoln) during the study period, infested with hematophagous fly Ornithoctona erythrocephala (Leach). Found on a variety of bird species (Bequaert 1955, Maa 1969), it was reported on B. playpterus in North and South America (Mueller et al 1969, Vaz et al 2016, Silva et al 2021). Ornithoctona erythrocephala was documented on a red-shouldered hawk ( Buteo lineatus ) in southeastern Oklahoma (McAllister et al 2018), but this is the first report of this hematophagous fly species on B. platypterus in Oklahoma.…”

A new Ornithoctona (Diptera: Hippoboscidae) species from Baikal State Nature Reserve (Russia)

“…The world fauna of the family Hippoboscidae, Samouelle, 1819 includes more than 210 species (Dick, 2018;Oboňa et al, 2019). They are divided into three subfamilies, namely Ornithomyinae, Hippoboscinae and Lipopteninae (Maa, 1969a;Maa & Peterson, 1987;Dick, 2018;Silva et al, 2021), which are distributed around the world.…”

“…Among them, only two species were recorded from the Palaearctic, namely O. australaisiae from Kazakhstan and Russian Far East (Doszhanov, 1980(Doszhanov, , 2003Nartshuk et al, 2018) and O. plicata from the Kuril Islands (Nartshuk et al, 2018). Other species inhabit Africa (Hutson, 1984), tropical Asia (Maa, 1969a,b;Wang et al, 2022), the Pacific Islands (Maa, 1969a,b), and the New World (Maa, 1969a,b;Moreira et al, 2019;Vélez et al, 2020;Silva et al, 2021).…”