Picophilopterus pici, sensu lato

Picophilopterus pici (Fabricius, 1798) sensu lato

(Figs 4, 8–9)

Pediculus pici Fabricius, 1798: 571.

Docophorus scalaris Burmeister, 1838: 427.

Picophilopterus tuktola Ansari, 1947: 265.

Picophilopterus sitzendorfensis Mey [in Złotorzycka], 1980: 129.

Penenirmus pici (Fabricius, 1798); Price et al. 2003: 210.

Type host: Picus viridis Linnaeus, 1758 —green woodpecker (Picidae).

Type locality. Estonia —following Clay & Hopkins (1960) designation of a neotype.

Other hosts: 25 species and subspecies of woodpeckers (Picidae); see Appendix 1.

Host in China: Picus canus sordidior (Rippon, 1906) —gray-headed woodpecker: new host record.

Material examined: 1♂, 1♀, 2 nymphs, Wudiancun, elev. 903–1080 m, Ruili County, Yunnan Province, China, 8 Jan. 2013, Y. Wu & Y. Zhang, bird J-0681, GD-PHTH-00119–00122 (IZGAS).

Remarks. This species was previously recorded from China by Chu et al. (2019), and this report is based on the same specimens. Picophilopterus pici has been recorded from at least 16 host species (Price et al. 2003), but it is unclear whether all louse populations are conspecific. As we show above, at least the population from Blythipicus pyrrhotis sinensis is not conspecific with P. pici. Considering that Dalgleish (1971) named as Brueelia straminea (Denny, 1842) a large number of dissimilar species, many of which are not closely related to each other (Gustafsson & Bush, in prep.), we suspect that Dalgleish (1972) overestimated the similarities among populations of P. pici from different hosts, and that some of these populations may prove to be different species.

The phylogeny of Johnson et al. (2021: fig 1) includes only one specimen of P. pici from Picus canus, nested within a large clade of species mostly named as P. auritus; hence, genetic variation within P. pici from different hosts is unknown. However, several specimens of P. auritus included in the same phylogeny indicate that this nominal species may represent a number of different taxa. A thorough morphological revision of Picophilopterus from all woodpeckers is needed to ascertain the true number of different species currently included under these two species names. As an example, here we provide illustrations of the head and male genitalia of lice from Picus canus sordidior, which may prove to be a different species from P. pici sensu stricto. Note that pst1–2 are not visible in examined specimens, and are not illustrated; the absence of these setae would need to be confirmed in other specimens.