![]() An optimal feather is one that can house a relatively large number of mites yet has a wall that is not too thick to inhibit feeding.įemale mites are passed from bird to bird through direct contact in the nest during spring by the infested feathers of a mother bird to her nestlings, which then carry them for the rest of their lives, Schmidt says. The type of feather which a particular mite inhabits depends on the volume inside the quill and its wall thickness. The chelicerae has two parts-the cheliceral body and the movable digit which is elongate, retractable and used for piercing the quill wall and feeding, Glowska explains. This microscope image is of the quill mite “Torotrogla merulae” which lives on the blackbird “Turdus merula” of Poland. “Different mite genera also are feather specific and only reside in one type of feather in their host’s plumage-the primary feathers, secondary feathers, tail-feathers, body feathers, etc.” ![]() “There is evidence that some mites may be able to parasitize a narrow range of closely related hosts, namely birds from the same genus or family,” Glowska adds. Approximately two thirds of the known quill mite species are host specific, meaning one quill mite species lives only on a specific bird species. “Other than the time when the female mites are dispersing, their entire life cycle is spent inside the quill,” Glowska says. Remarkably, quill mites spend almost their entire lives enclosed inside the stiff, hollow central shaft or quill of a feather, a space called the lumen. Nearly all of what is known about their behavior comes from a few studies done in the 1970s on the quill mites of the common house sparrow. (Photo Gary Bauchan, Electron & Confocal Microscopy Unit USDA-ARS/courtesy Eliza Glowska)Īlthough quill mite taxonomy is an area of intense research-320 species of quill mites have been discovered and described so far-knowledge of the life history and biology of these parasites is extremely limited, Glowska and Schmidt say. This scanning electron microscope image shows quill mites packed inside the lumen or hollow area inside the quill of a bird’s feather. She visited and systematically went through all of our bags of feathers looking for quill mites.” “We then got a request from Eliza Glowska asking about feather mites. “Whenever we make a skeleton from a bird we save as many of its feathers as we can,” Schmidt explains. The feathers were from specimens collected in Gabon, Africa by Smithsonian ornithologist Brian Schmidt that had been turned into study skeletons. Eliza Glowska, an acarologist (mite specialist) at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, discovered the new quill mites while studying the feathers of paradise-flycatchers at the Division of Birds in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. ![]() Mites are arachnids, tiny eight legged parasites related to spiders and ticks. Pipicobia terpsiphoni and Syringophiloidus furthi are two recently named quill mites that live inside the feather quills of the black-headed paradise-flycatcher. Now a new discovery of two mite species found living in the flycatcher’s feathers opens a question between the birds and the bugs of just who caught who first? The black-headed paradise-flycatcher of western and central Africa is a small colorful forest bird that thrives on the flying insects it chases down by swooping, dipping and diving on the wing. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |