Phthiraptera

The chewing lice collection of Cornell University has been inventoried and is maintained in a database by the curator. The following displays are taken from that database. Click on the family name and you will be taken to the records for species in the collection within that family. The louse binomials are arranged alphabetically by genus, then species. The host names are verbatium from the slide labels. The slides are in standard 100 slide boxes.

The majority of specimens were collected by Francis H. Wilson and Eugene W. Stafford, I believe from bird skins at the American Museum of Natural History. They have "Cornell University" slide labels and the initials of Wilson or Stafford. There are numerous mispellings of host and locality data, however, it is not clear if these were errors in the transcription of labels from the skins, or if the skin labels are mispelled. These specimens were mounted in Canada Balsam without being macerated in KOH, thus the gut contents and internal structures remain. In most cases these specimens cannot be reliabily identified to species without them being macerated, cleared and remounted. However, they do represent a great resource for anyone interested in gut contents or internal parasites. The American Museum of Natural History has specimens from these series.

A significant portion of the collection includes specimens from the Falconiformes collected by Eugene Gerberg as part of his doctoral research.

Emerson (1965) reports on specimens depostited by V. L. Kellogg in the Cornell University Insect Collection.

Many of the identifications were by Dalgleish in 1964 before he knew what he was doing, - it was easier that way, - he even produced a key to the Ischnocera! Unless otherwise noted within the family listing, only the generic identifications are reliable.

These are "static" pages and thus may not represent the most current inventory. Please check the "update" below each family page to verify when the records were last changed.