Sentences with phrase «body lice»
"Body lice" refers to tiny insects that live on human bodies and feed on blood. They can cause itching and discomfort and are often found in unclean or crowded living conditions. Full definition
Most species of body lice infest only one species of bird host, whereas each wing lice species generally infests several species of bird.
sciencemag.org
Re # 2: [If human body lice studies are confirmed as indicating that not a single human wore clothing, not even animal skins, as recently as 169,000 years ago, then the average temperature globally must have been considerably warmer...]
Christopher Harbison and Dale Clayton, evolutionary biologists at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, wondered whether another bug, the parasitic hippoboscid fly, could explain how body lice get around more.
If human body lice studies are confirmed as indicating that not a single human wore clothing, not even animal skins, as recently as 169,000 years ago, then the average temperature globally must have been considerably warmer than it is now in African latitudes where most of us may have been located in those days.
«Within human head and body lice there are distinct clades identified by their mitochondrial haplotypes; potentially a result of modern and extinct hominids exchanging lice.
Body lice need human clothing to survive.
He and his colleagues performed a genetic analysis to determine when body lice evolved, which reveals when their clothing habitat appeared: 72,000
Body lice live on the abdomens of the birds, where they feast on downy, insulating feathers.
But why are body lice so faithful to one species and wing lice so promiscuous?
In the presence of flies, wing lice travel between host species, whereas body lice do not, the researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Head lice are harmless and body lice spread disease, yet they have the same genes — the difference could all be in the way they splice them together
Instead, the blame can be put on human parasites like body lice and fleas for the primary spread of the plague bacteria during the Second Pandemic.
Used topically it kills body lice and heals skin problems.
To add to the overall creepiness of this, the merkin was actually worn to conceal the fact that the woman had shaved her pubic hair in order to eradicate body lice (eek!)
Last year researchers sequenced the genome of body lice, one of our long - time enemies.
To test if the plague spread through rat - fleas or human - parasites, the research team modeled each with equations that mimicked an outbreak's rise and fall, based on how body lice, fleas, or rats would behave and spread the disease.
Body lice, which feed on your blood and nothing else, spread many diseases, including typhus and trench fever.
Body lice, and hence clothing, may have appeared around the time when modern humans started to explore the world beyond Africa, which many researchers now place at 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.
Body lice, Pediculus humanus corporis, probably took up residence in garments only after humans began wearing them around 72,000 years ago, while their relatives Phthirus pubis, crab lice, live among human pubic hairs and rarely anywhere else.
Tests have also shown that wing lice can cling to the flies much better than their body lice counterparts.
The body lice's short legs make them poorly adapted to riding the flies, whereas wing lice sport long legs that allow for a good, strong grip, Harbison says.
Body lice's fidelity to their hosts reveals itself in the way the bugs and birds have evolved: Genetic tests show that the evolutionary trees of body lice and their bird hosts often branch at similar positions, implying the two animals» close relationship influenced when they split into different species.
Lice can not survive in unworn clothing; hence, body lice are most common in crowded conditions like prison camps, where washing is infrequent.