Notes for me
Check folder before making copies.
Remember: parasite weaken host but usually do not kill them.
Parasites are usually much more specific than predatory insects.
Solenophage: a vessel-feeding insect like a mosquito, thin proboscis, anthesia, anticoagulents.
Telophage: a pool-feeding insect like a stable fly, sharp cutting mandibles and sponging
mouthparts, anti-coagulents.
Most vertebrate blood-feeders have mycetomes, which are mutualistic microorganisms
that help them break down proteins and get more nutrition out of their meal.
Many ectoparasites, like fleas, have ctenophores, or backwards pointing spines that help
lodge them in fur or hair and prevent their being pulled out easily. Most ectoparasites are
also flattened with thick cuticles and reduced wings and sensory structures.
Pediculus humanus – Body louse
Pediculus capitis – head louse
Phthirus pubis – crab louse
Ctenocephalides felis – cat flea
Amblyomma americanum – Lone star tick
Ixodes scapularis – Deer tick
Dermacentor variabilis – American dog tick
Babesia bigemina – Red water or Texas cattle fever (protozoan) (tick)
Borrelia burgdorferi – Lyme disease (spirochete) (tick)
Plasmodium falciparum – Malaria (Protozoan) (mosquito)
Trypanosoma brucei – Nagana (trypanosome) (tsete fly)
Trypanosoma gambiense – Sleeping sickness (trypanosome) (tsete fly)
Rickettsia prowazekii – typhus (rickettsia) (louse)
Yersinia pestis – Bubonic plague (bacterium) (flea)
Anopheles mosquitoes – Palps as long as proboscis, legs long, wings spotted, feed with
abdomen elevated, scutellum is round and strap-like. Container breeders.
Aedes mosquitoes – striped bodies, container breeders.
Typhus is always fatal to the body louse carrying it, and is passed on through feces
scratched into louse bites or other wounds.
Lice also vector trench fever and epidemic relapsing fever
Fleas feed on colonial animals, easily passed from one to another, and have a sleeping
site they return to that young can be laid in.
Plague is always fatal to the flea carrying it. It is passed on through a blood meal
regurgitated into a wound or into body as flea feeds.
Malaria reproduction takes places in the mosquito, and is passed on to humans with the
taking of a blood meal.
Aedes mosquitoes can vector yellow fever, Dengue fever, St. Louis encephalitis, and
hemorrhagic fever with their blood meals.
Culex mosquitoes can vector West Nile virus with their blood meals.
House flies can vector several diseases, mostly because they move back and forth a lot
from garbage/dung to our food. They can vector cholera, dysentery, and typhoid fever.
Books for class
Medical and Veterinary Entomology
Mosquito
Tropical Nature
Krakatoa