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Haematomyzus elephantis
Haematomyzus elephantis is a species of louse that is an ectoparasite of elephants. The species was first described from a specimen obtained from a captive African elephant at Rotterdam zoo by Édouard Piaget in 1896. Specimens identified under the same name were subsequently recorded from Asian elephants, African elephants and warthogs in the wild.[1] Early descriptions of the louse noted that they were remarkably similar to the bird lice in spite of differences in the length of the snout, an adaptation for dealing with the thick skin of their hosts, but they were subsequently separated into a different group, the Rhyncophthirina.[2] The species was first described from an African elephant in captivity. It was subsequently recorded from Sri Lankan elephants and a Sumatran elephant. Many of the early descriptions are based on captive hosts and it is unclear whether those came from the wild or if they jumped host from other animals in the zoo. The species obtained from warthogs was subsequently described as a new species.[3] Captive Sri Lankan elephants were examined and found to have high lice prevalence. The African forest elephant has not been examined, but the lice from the African savanna elephant and the Asian elephant are expected to be separate species as the hosts themselves diverged 8.4 million years ago and the lice are wingless and incapable of wide dispersal. Morphologically they appear very similar. Molecular phylogenetic studies made in 2023 of specimens from the wild however indicate cryptic species with well marked differences in the mitochondria DNA sequences between those taken from African (savanna) and Asian elephants, indicating the need for further study.[4][5][6] References
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