PROCEEDINGS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



U. S. NATION.^ MUSEUM 



Vol. 106 Washington: 1957 No. 3375 



STUDIES IN NEOTROPICAL MALLOPHAGA, XVI: BIRD LICE 

 OF THE SUBORDER ISCHNOCERA 



By M. A. Carriker, Jr. 



The present paper deals with two very interesting groups of Mallo- 

 phaga parasitic on one of the largest families of Neotropical Passeri- 

 formes, the Formicariidae (antbirds). In spite of the fact that this 

 family of birds contains .53 genera and 680 species and subspecies 

 (Peters, Check-List of Birds of the World, 19.31), there have been 

 described from it only three species of Mallophaga — two species of 

 Machaerilaetnns and one species of Furnancola which possibly may 

 have been a straggler from some species of Furnariidae or Dendro- 

 colaptidae. 



This family of birds inhabits all varieties of cover ranging from dry, 

 xerophytic scrub to dense, humid jungle and from sea level to timber 

 line all the way from Mexico to Argentina and Chile. 



At this point I wish to insert a note respecting the group of Mal- 

 lophaga for which I erected the genus Furnaricola in 1944 and which 

 was placed under the synonomy of RaUicola by Hopkins and Clay in 

 1952 (A Checklist of the Genera and Species of Mallophaga). The 

 species described under Furnaricola, and numerous other undescribed 

 specimens in my collection of the same genus are all from hosts be- 

 longing to the famiHes Furnariidae and Dendrocolaptidae, with the 

 single exception mentioned above, which was taken on a species of 

 Formicariidae. 



A careful examination of the species of this group shows that they 

 are, apparently, closely related to the species of the two new genera 



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