PSYCHE. 



ON THE PIGEON MITE, HYPODECTES FILIPPI. 



BV HENRY B. WARD, PH.D., LIN'COLN, N'EBR. 



The November, 1S92, number of 

 Insect Life contained a note by Prof. 

 D. S. Kellicott on a mite found in the 

 thymus of a pigeon ; on the authority of 

 Muiray ('77) it is said to be Hypoderas 

 cohtinbae. Last spring while working 

 in the zoological laboratory of Harvard 

 University, I obtained specimens of this 

 same form through the kindness of Dr. 

 W. McM. Woodworth, who had found 

 them some time previously in the loose 

 peritracheal tissue of a pigeon. Study 

 of the parasites and of the literature 

 bearing upon the group revealed so 

 many points of interest, especially con- 

 cerning this stage in the life history, 

 that it seems proper to present here an 

 abstract of the work of previous investi- 

 gators since the number of names under 

 which this foi'm has been described 

 renders its study difficult. The appar- 

 ent lack of information among Amer- 

 ican students as to its interesting and 

 complicated life history is due also, no 

 doubt, to the inaccessibility of most of 

 the papers bearing upon the subject. 

 Together with this review is given as 

 complete a bibliography as it has been 

 possible to prepare. For assistance in 

 this I am indebted to Mr. A. D. 

 Michael of London, Eng. and to Profes- 



sor J. A. Lintner of Albany, N. Y. 

 Reference has been made in the bibli- 

 ography to reviews, abstracts and trans- 

 lations of the original articles so f;ir as 

 known to the writer, but the list is 

 probablv not complete. 



The first jjublished account of this 

 parasite seems to have been that of 

 Montagu ('oS) whose description and 

 figures leave no doubt as to the close 

 relationship of the form he observed to 

 that found in the pigeon, while at the 

 same time the specific identity of 

 the two forms must always remain un- 

 certain on account of the incomplete- 

 ness of his description. He named the 

 form which he found in the gannet, 

 CeUularia Bassotii. 



Two Italian naturalists, G6ne ('4S) 

 and Filippi ('61), were the next to 

 record observations on similar mites. 

 Filippi made a new genus, Hypodectes, 

 to include them and described five spe- 

 cies parasitic in the areolar tissue of 

 various birds, each species receiving a 

 name from its host.* 



In the same year Giebel ('61), with- 

 out knowledge of this last paper, pub- 

 lished a posthumous article by Nitzsch 



*His synopsis of these species together witli their 

 hosts is to be found in Megnin ('79, p. 131). 



