Understanding the life history characteristics of bird lice: Amblycera vs. Ischnocera

Permanent ectoparasites, adapted to living on their hosts, face limited survival abilities and food availability off the host body.
We investigated the variance in survivability and the diet type preferences between bird lice from two different groups – Amblycera and Ischnocera. While phylogenetic or morphological data can easily separate these groups, the difference in their life history characteristics is poorly understood.
We observed that ischnoceran lice showed significantly longer survival than amblyceran lice (p<0.05) off the host body and experimental supplementing with host feathers further increased the survival time of ischnoceran lice.
To examine the preference and possible effects of the diet, we evaluated the presence of feathers, blood, or both in 4587 chewing lice (1418 amblyceran, and 3169 ischnoceran lice). Blood was found in 36% of amblyceran lice from 14 genera, and no blood was found in ischnoceran lice, pointing to different feeding habits between these two grou..., This study connects four separate datasets to bring a more comprehensive understanding of the life history characteristics of bird lice (Amblycera and Ischnocera)., , # Understanding the life history characteristics of bird lice: Amblycera vs. Ischnocera

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.51c59zwhs](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.51c59zwhs)
[https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13350560](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13350560)

### Files and variables

**Description of the data and file structure**

#### **Supplementary material includes the following files:**

1.     **Supplementary Dataset S1.** Data from the first dataset (field experiments) – a list of birds evaluated for the variability in surface temperatures of different body regions (head, back, belly, underwing, and neck) and their relation to the bird’s body mass and/or their lice specimens used for survival experiment. **n/a** represents missing or uncollected values (e.g., we have not collected any lice from that specific bird host individual from which we took temperature values, or lice were not included in the experiments). The yellow background of the cell represents the same host species from...