Frost Curators' Blog

Musings and miscellanea from the Frost Entomological Museum

Friday Night Lice-Week 30

This week’s mystery lice were collected in Pak Thong Chai, Nakhon Ratchaisma province, Thailand on December 22, 1968.

Microscopic image of two lice that look as though they are reaching out to each other.
Mystery lice from Thailand. Photo by Emily Sandall (CC BY 2.0). Click for source.

 

Its host was the common treeshrew,Tupais glis (Diard & Duvuacel 1820) (Scandentia: Tupaiidae). This species inhabits dipterocarp rain forests on the Malay Peninsula.

Photo of a small mammal resembling a squirrel sitting on some branches.
A common treeshrew hanging out. Photo by Katrina J Houdek (CC BY-SA 2.0). Click for source.

Tupai is the Malay word for both squirrel and treeshrew, which makes sense as these animals really do resemble squirrels even though they are not in the same family (Fuchs & Corbach-Söhle 2010).  Scandentia is often thought of as an order with characters of highly developed insectivores and primitive primates, and the Tupaiidae family has been moved around many times in terms of its phylogeny (Bloch & Boyer 2002).

Closeup photo of a treeshrew's head.
Tupais glis. Photo by letdown102 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Click for source.

The common treeshrew is also used as a model animal due to its many similarities to nonhuman primates (Cao et al 2003).

Please comment if you have any ideas of what the mystery lice could be. The answer will be posted early next week!

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Department of Entomology, in the College of Agricultural Sciences, at Penn State

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