Tree-of-Life
Louse pages
The Tree-of-Life web pages for Phthiraptera are written by Vince Smith and Rod Page and contain a wealth of information on the biology and taxonomy of lice. This information is designed primarily for non-entomologists to access systematic information on lice that would otherwise be restricted to specialist papers. They were formally connected to the site in March 1997 and were most recently updated in June last year.
Interactive
Guide to Louse Anatomy
Despite 1000+ publications on lice throughout the past century there has never been a single comprehensive account of ischnoceran louse morphology. Using a simple image map in association with the Java applet IMap an introductory guide to avian ischnoceran morphology has been placed on-line. This was implemented by an undergraduate working in association with Rod Page and Vince Smith.
Searchable
Louse Bibliography
Tracing literature is a major task that is compounded by the patchy quality and relative antiquity of most work on Phthiraptera. I have compiled a bibliographic literature database that contains detailed notes on most monographic and taxonomic works for Ischnocera and many similar studies on Amblycera. This database has been mounted on the WWW using Reference Web Poster (Research Information Systems) and will output selected bibliographic information on-line.
Feather
Lice SEM Image Library
Image libraries can provide a wealth of information for present and future taxonomists. This library contains over 500 scanning electron micrographs from 24 genera (27 species) of avian lice which I compiled throughout the course of my PhD. They were used to help corroborate cryptic external morphological characters that cannot be seen in slide mounted material examined using conventional phase contrast microscopy.
Louse
Image Gallery
Thirty photomicrographs illustrating the major suborder of lice and their hosts. This is a useful resource for those trying to distinguish the major suborders of lice. Host data is also provided.
A
Rough Guide to Lice...
Descriptions, taxonomy, images, host data and human lice. Everything you wanted to know about lice, and then a bit more.
Louse
Suborders
A taxonomic guide to the four louse suborders. This table describes the main characteristics of the Amblycera, Ischnocera, Rhyncophthirina and Anoplura. Data on the number of species and major host groups infested is also provided.
Interactive
Key to selected Avian Ischnocera
Interactive keys provide a flexible alternative to traditional paper-based dichotomous keys. This key for generic exemplars of two avian ischnoceran families uses Navikey, a Java applet designed to provide a graphical user interface to data stored in DELTA format.
Bird
Louse Chooser
Avian Ischnocera are permanent ectoparasites that are intimately associated with their hosts. This close association means that accurate species identification is often possible by reference to their host. This simple web site was designed primarily as a tool to associate pelagic seabird host data with their known lice using pictures. It has been used to explore possible instances of host switching between seabird lice based on the geographic distribution of their seabird hosts.
Louse
12S rRNA Database
This site developed by Rod Page contains inferred secondary structures for louse (Insecta: Phthiraptera) mitochondrial 12S rRNA sequences.
RNAlign
Server
This server developed by Rod Page takes a sequence for the third domain of the louse mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene and aligns it with an existing databank. The server returns an alignment and secondary structure model for your sequence.
Lousy
Folk
Pictures are of people working on louse systematics and ecology. They are primarily of researchers based at the University of Glasgow, but include pictures of colleagues abroad. NOTE: There are quite a few pictures on this page to it may take a while to download!
Louse
Collection Techniques
I've prepared various guide for collecting and preserving bird and mammal lice. These are accessible from the "Can you help" page and are specifically aimed at those contributing material to our louse collection here at Glasgow. This material is being used in an ongoing projects to investigate louse relationships. For more details of these projects, visit the research pages.
TreeBASE and Genbank Queries
TreeBASE and Genbank have become the taxonomic standard for databasing phylogenetic hypotheses and molecular sequence data. Throughout the duration of this project we expect to make extensive use of TreeBASE and Genbank as a data repository. Use the link below to query Genbank for current data on Phthiraptera: