PSYCHE. 



THE MALLOPHAGA. 



BY VERNON L. KEI.LOUG, STANFORD UNI\ERSITY, CAI,. 



A sm;ill and interesting group of 

 insects, the Mailophaga, seems to have 

 been pretty methodicallv and consist- 

 ently overlooi^ed bv American insect- 

 students. In Germany, Nilzsch of tlie 

 University of Halle, and following him 

 and profiting hv the collections and 

 notes made by him, Giebel and Tas- 

 chenberg, at Leyden Piaget, and in 

 England Demi}', have undertaken tu 

 collect and describe Mailophaga, with 

 the result that some looo species have 

 been named, and several yery portly 

 volumes filled with descriptions antl 

 figures of these small parasitic insects 

 have been printed. The Mailophaga 

 are interesting because of their parasitic 

 habits, their strangely specialized struc- 

 ture, and the still open question of their 

 jjosition among insects. Because they 

 have been commonly associated with 

 the Pediculidae in early entomological 

 texts, and have been studied by Nitzsch, 

 Giebel, Denny and Piaget with the true 

 lice as external parasites of warm- 

 blooded animals, and are called " lice," 

 and are unknown things to most ento- 

 mologists, they are commonly held as 

 a group closely allied to the Pediculi- 

 dae, which they most certainly are not. 



They have an incomplete metamor- 

 phosis, biting mouth pai ts, are wingless, 

 and feed on the scales, feathers and 



hairs of mammals and birds. They 

 have giadually ascended during the 

 stoi-m and stress of classificatory strug- 

 gling from the position of a family 

 blown with each changing wind from 

 Hemiptera to Orthoptera to Pseudo- 

 Neuroptera, to the position of an inde- 

 pendent order untrammeled by near 

 lelalions or affinities. 



With some considerable difficult}' I 

 have matle a small beginning in the 

 study of the American forms, and have 

 now in the course of printing the 

 descriptions and figures of one new 

 genus and 38 new species of Mailo- 

 phaga collected by me from American 

 water and shore birds, mostly maritime 

 birds shot on the Bay of Monterey, 

 California. On these water birds I 

 have besides identified 33 species 

 previously described from European 

 Ijirds. In addition I have noted on 

 American land birds 16 previously 

 described species and 24 new forms. 

 No recognizable species of Mailophaga 

 has been heretofore described from 

 specimens taken from American birds. 

 In this short study of the group, there 

 are apparent many interesting prob- 

 lems in zoological and geographical 

 distribution, in the relation of parasite 

 to host, and in the peculiar opportuni- 

 ties for variation and species-forming. 



