Word: mallophaga
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Dates: during 1951-1951
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...British Museum of Natural History was in grateful receipt last week of a strange new gift-500,000 Mallophaga, the world's leading collection of bird lice...
...fighting the Empire's battles, from skirmishes in India to the trenches of World War I. Instead of retiring to his London town house, which bristles with lion and panther heads, he teamed up with his young cousin, Zoologist Theresa Clay, and mounted an offensive against the Mallophaga. He and Theresa believe that the lice can be used as a small-scale model of animal evolution...
...Mallophaga are not beautiful. Many are pinhead size; the largest are only about one-quarter-inch long. But they have exploited their universe, the feathered outsides of birds, with commendable perseverance...
...Travelers. About 4,000 species of Mallophaga are already known-far more than are needed to fit all the special niches. So, many of the species must have been formed by such evolutionary forces as change of environment. Because each kind of louse is limited to certain birds, it is easy for groups of lice to get out of touch with the main body of their kind. When birds cross a natural barrier, such as a desert or mountain range, the lice they carry become like animals living on an island. They often change in the course of time...
...colonel and Theresa believe that their own ecological niche, the Mallophaga, contains enough scientific nourishment to support them indefinitely. This year they plan to visit India and Assam. Many new lice are awaiting them there, though political instability, as the colonel remarks regretfully, makes it more difficult for them to reach the lousy birds...
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