The Evolution of Microhabitat Specialization in Avian Ischnocera: Displacement or Assortment?

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract Closely related sympatric species often differ in the way they use resources or escape their natural enemies. These repeated differences can be attributed to two processes: repeated character displacement or lineage assortment. Feather lice (Insecta: Ischnocera), parasitic on birds, provide an opportunity to test for these two alternatives in a relatively diverse system that involves several host microhabitats related to parasite escape from host preening. This research will construct a phylogeny of avian feather lice based on an integration of molecular and morphological data, including DNA sequences for one mitochondrial and three nuclear genes and nearly 6000 base pairs. The phylogeny will permit a critical assessment of microhabitat specialization, the first such rigorous test in a host-parasite system. This host-parasite system of adaptations is of interest to population geneticists, systematists, and ecologists and has implications for understanding the origin of parasitic relationships of interest to medical and veterinary entomologists. Integration of morphological and molecular data will support the first rigorous, modern concepts of feather lice phylogeny and form the basis for greatly improved and predictive classifications.