NORTH AMERICAN ANOPLURA 



II 



NORTH AMERICAN ANOPLURA 



The systematic knowledge of the North American Anoplura — indeed, 

 of the Anoplura of the world — is still very slight. Although probably 

 most of the species infesting the domestic animals, and certainly all of 

 those infesting man, are known, but few species have as yet been collected 

 from wild animals. At the time of writing this paper only about a hun- 

 dred species of Anoplura have been described, of which three occur on 

 man and a dozen on domestic animals. The remaining four score have 

 been taken from animals both of wide geographic and wide taxonomic 

 distribution. Monkeys, wild cattle, sheep, goats, deer, elephants, the 

 giraffe, rabbits, rats, mice, squirrels, gophers, shrews, wolves, foxes, wild 

 cats, seals and walruses, of the Old and New Worlds, are represented in 

 the host list, which, however, altogether includes hardly a hundred mam- 

 mal species. There is no doubt, of course, that many other mammals are 

 hosts of Anoplura; only a beginning in the recording of both parasite 

 and host species has been made. 



But this beginning, and the accompanying study of the general bi- 

 ology of the Anoplura and their particular relations to their hosts, both 

 as regards the distribution, the adaptive structural modification, and the 

 physiological fitting of the parasite species and the injury to the host 

 species, have revealed such important problems that the collection and 

 study of the Anoplura is certain to be pursued with an ever increasing 

 interest and ardor. 



The special problem of the host and geographic distribution of the 

 Anoplura and Mallophaga of mammals has already been rather fully 

 taken up by the senior author in a paper, "Ectoparasites of Mammals," 

 published in the American Naturalist, vol. 48, pp. 257-279, May 1914, and 

 a special brief discussion of certain significant aspects of the close phys- 

 iological fitting of the parasites to the specific blood character of the hosts 

 has been given by the senior author in a paper entitled "Ectoparasites of 

 the Monkeys, Apes and Man," published in Science, N. S. vol. 38, pp. 

 601-602, October 1913. 



The comparatively recent determination by the precipitins reactions 

 and by a study of the crystallizable proteins (haemoglobin) of the spe- 



