This might get gross...

Hey experimenters!

Field season is over, this means curling up by the warmth of the lab's Incu-Shaker™ and spending some quality time sorting through the feather samples I collected over the summer. After pulling my samples out of the freezer, What else would I have found than a bunch of frozen ectoparasites!

Ok, I know I like to say that pigeons are very clean birds, and they are.

However, every animal ( including YOU) has a community of external parasites and epiphytes that live in hair, skin, feathers and scales of their hosts. Most of these parasites are tiny, around the size of the typical human head louse. However, in special cases these parasites and epiphytes can be rather large. Take the famous "sloth moths" that live within the fur of two and three toed sloths. These moths feed on the algae in the fur of sloths, and breed in their droppings. the sloth gets nothing out of this, but the moths get food, a place to live, and protection from predators.

 

Slooooth Moooooth

However, I don't study sloths here, and the little critters found on pigeons are a little.... less friendly........

So let's meet some of the tiny fellows I've met so far in my feather searching!

Columbicola columbae:

C. columbae is a wingless louse that chew on the feathers of it's hosts. like most ectoparasites, C. columbae is specialized to live on certain hosts. compared to most parasites, it has a plethora of potential food sources. a whole FOUR species of pigeon are available to this species, including the stock dove, triangular spotted, pale backed, and of course rock pigeon.

C. columbae causes little damage to the pigeon it lives on. The pigeon, however does not like the little hitchhikers on it's feathers and tries to preen them off whenever possible. this has caused an evolutionary arms race between the pigeon and louse.