Phthiraptera

Louse is the common name for any member of the infraorder Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera was previously recognized as an order, until a 2021 genetic study determined that they are a highly modified lineage of the order Psocodea, whose members are commonly known as booklice, barklice or barkflies.

Phthiraptera

photo by Vincent S. Smith · CC BY 2.5 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
parasitic lousePBDB
Sits inside
TroctomorphaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 201 million years on record.

The record covers at least 201.4 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 205.7 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Late Triassic — about 1 of 5 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 5 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 5 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 5 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 0 of 5 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 5 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 5 occurrencesEocene — about 2 of 5 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 5 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 5 occurrencesPliocene — about 0 of 5 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 5 occurrences210–203 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences203–196 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences105–98 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences98–91 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences49–42 Mya — about 2 occurrences42–35 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences7.0–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence201.4 Mya129 ka210 Mya0 Mya

5 occurrences of Phthiraptera on record, most of them in the Eocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

5 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

3 formations

Eifel — 50.11°N, 6.82°EBagra — 22.49°N, 77.73°EGreen River — 39.72°N, 108.14°W

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The named rock units Phthiraptera has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Phthiraptera and its relatives

Eocene

Where Phthiraptera and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

107 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Phthiraptera, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

5 references

Each of the 5 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Phthiraptera

Credit
photo by Vincent S. Smith
Licence
CC BY 2.5
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Phthiraptera was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itTroctomorpha through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Haeckel 1896)