Effort clarifies major branch of insect tree of life

The insects known as Hemiptera are not a particularly glamorous bunch. This group includes stink bugs, bed bugs, litter bugs, scale insects and aphids. Their closest relatives are thrips, bark lice and parasitic lice. But ...

Are viruses keeping sea lice at bay in wild salmon?

More than 30 previously unknown RNA viruses in sea lice have been identified by University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers. Sea lice are parasitic copepods (small crustaceans) found in many fresh and saltwater habitats, ...

Study explores coevolution of mammals and their lice

According to a new study, the first louse to take up residence on a mammalian host likely started out as a parasite of birds. That host-jumping event tens of millions of years ago began the long association between mammals ...

Sex, lice and videotape

A few years ago, Scott Villa of Emory University had a problem. Then a graduate student at the University of Utah, he was stumped with an issue never addressed in school: How does one film lice having sex?

Biologists experimentally trigger adaptive radiation

When naturalist Charles Darwin stepped onto the Galapagos Islands in 1835, he encountered a bird that sparked a revolutionary theory on how new species originate. From island to island, finches had wildly varied beak designs ...

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Louse

Lice (singular: louse) is the common name for over 3,000 species of wingless insects of the order Phthiraptera; three of which are classified as human disease agents. They are obligate ectoparasites of every avian and mammalian order except for monotremes (the platypus and echidnas), bats, whales, dolphins, porpoises and pangolins.

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