Any
flea that was 20 times as big as the all-too-familiar human flea Pulex irritans (a giant model of which
is shown here) would certainly deserve to be designated as the emperor of all
of its bloodsucking brethren, but in the case of the imperial flea, appearances
can – and did – definitely deceive! (© David Ludwig/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)
It was way back in 1997, within my book From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings,
when I originally documented the tragic tale of the imperial flea. In those
far-distant, pre-internet days (at least for me, because at the time of my
researching and writing that book I'd yet to purchase my first PC, let alone
log online for the first time), I had succeeded in unearthing only a few, very
sparse details concerning this entomological enigma (from an Antenna article of 1982, and even that
only mentioned it in passing). Hence my coverage of it in my book was
necessarily brief.
In later years, conversely, with the internet's
vast, ever-growing archive of data readily available online, I have compiled a
comprehensive file of additional information on this intriguing subject. This
has enabled me at long last to piece together what I hope is the entire and
highly (albeit unintentionally) entertaining history of the imperial flea, as
well as unraveling several twisted strands of confusion and contradiction
regarding this contentious creature. So here it is.
SQUASHED
AND QUASHED – THE ENDING OF AN EMPEROR
It all began in Gateshead, a large town
close to the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in north-west England, when one
morning in early 1857 a Dr Backhouse (not Blackhouse, as occasionally claimed) woke
up to find a most unwelcome, highly unexpected visitor in his bed. The visitor
in question was a sizeable insect, which the good doctor lost no time in
permanently dispatching, allegedly with the able assistance of one of his
boots. It seemed to him to be a siphonapteran, i.e. a true flea, but one that
was far bigger than any that he had ever seen before.
Hoping to learn more, Backhouse sent the
flattened ex-hexapod to naturalist friend Thomas John Bold in nearby Long
Benton (now Longbenton), for his opinion on what it could be. Bold, however,
was unable to identify the creature, but deemed it sufficiently interesting to
warrant being sent for formal examination and identification to eminent
entomologist Prof. John Obadiah Westwood (1805-1893), based at Oxford
University in England. So that is precisely what Bold did.
Among many other titles and academic
positions, Prof. Westwood was President of the Entomological Society of London
(now the Royal Entomological Society), as well as a Fellow of the Linnean
Society of London. After a cursory examination of Backhouse's squashed specimen,
he exhibited it during meetings held at both of these societies – a fact rarely
mentioned in previous coverages of it.
The first (but only rarely alluded to) of
these two meetings took place on 3 February 1857, at the Linnean Society of
London; the second (much more famous) one occurred on 4 May 1857, at the
Entomological Society of London. At both of them, Westwood orally described the
insect as being a specimen of a hitherto-unknown species of gigantic flea, approximately
20 times as big as the common human flea Pulex
irritans. Fittingly, he proposed imperator
('emperor') as the taxonomic species name for this veritable emperor among
fleas.
Prof.
J.O. Westwood in c.1850 (public domain)
Westwood's exhibition and naming of this
specimen was duly if briefly reported as follows on p. 70 of the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of
London for 1857:
Mr.
Westwood also exhibited a gigantic species of flea, for which he proposed the
specific name of imperator. The
specimen, which is about twenty times the size of the common Pulex irritans
[sic – taxonomic binomial names should always be published in italics], was
found dead in a bed at Gateshead.
It was also reported (but even more
briefly) as follows on p. iv of the Journal
of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Zoology, Vol. 2 for 1858:
Read,
secondly, a "Description of a new species of Pulex (P. Imperator,
Westw.) found in a bedstead at Gateshead;" by J. O. Westwood, Esq., F.L.S.
Just under a fortnight following
Westwood's exhibition of this specimen at the Entomological Society of London, Long
Benton-based Bold confirmed in print his action that had been instrumental in
bringing about this very curious creature's scientific debut. He did this by
way of the following brief recollection penned on 17 May 1857 and then
published shortly afterwards in the Transactions
of the Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club:
Pulex Imperator
[sic – the 'i' in imperator should not be capitalized],
Westwood. A friend of mine [Dr Backhouse], resident in Gateshead, brought an
immense flea, which he had found in his bed, for my examination. Not being able
to identify it, I forwarded the creature to J.O. Westwood, Esq., by whom it has
been described as new, under the above appellation, in a paper recently read before
the Linnaean Society.
It is important to emphasise Bold's
intermediary presence in these proceedings, because virtually every previous
account of the imperial flea's history that I have read mistakenly claims that
Backhouse sent the specimen directly to Westwood, rather than via Bold.
The
type – and only – specimen of Pulex
imperator, the immense but ill-fated imperial flea (© Dr Darren J. Mann)
The full formal taxonomic name of any
given species includes not only its binomial portion (i.e. the genus name plus
the species name for that species) but also the surname of whoever formally
described and named that species, plus the year in which its binomial name was
first published. Consequently, it is well worth explaining here how the full
formal taxonomic name of the imperial flea – Pulex imperator Westwood, 1858 – came about.
Although imperator was proposed as its species name by Westwood at both
scientific society meetings where he exhibited and orally described this
specimen in 1857, he did not provide at either of them a published description
formally naming it as Pulex imperator.
Similarly, within the brief above-quoted report published in its Proceedings for 1857 of Westwood's
exhibition and oral description of this specimen at its meeting of 4 May 1857, it
can be seen that the Entomological Society of London did not refer to its
species as Pulex imperator either.
Conversely, in the Linnean Society of
London's even briefer above-quoted report published in its own Journal of Proceedings for 1858 of Westwood's exhibition and oral description of
this specimen at its 3 February 1857 meeting, it did refer to its species as Pulex
imperator – which is generally deemed to be the very first time that this
binomial name had appeared in print. This in turn is why the imperial flea's
full scientific name contains the year 1858, rather than 1857, despite the
latter year being the one in which the specimen was given the binomial name orally
by Westwood. (Having said that, I cannot help but wonder why Bold's published
naming of it as Pulex imperator in
his 1857 Transactions of the Tyneside
Naturalists' Field Club communication did not take precedence over
Westwood's in 1858…?)
Anyway, taxonomic technicalities aside,
there seemed no denying that Westwood's imperial flea Pulex imperator was a truly extraordinary addition to the entomological
fauna of Britain and, indeed, the world, because this was unquestionably the
largest flea species known to science.
Specimen
labels alongside the type specimen of the imperial flea Pulex imperator (© Dr Darren J. Mann)
So far, so good – until, that is, following
his initial cursory examination that had incited him into describing and naming
it as a gigantic flea, Westwood decided to conduct a much more detailed,
extensive scrutiny of Backhouse's Brobdingnagian specimen. Only then was the
awful truth, the embarrassing reality, of its taxonomic nature duly revealed to
him.
What Westwood had originally assumed to
be the creature's long, blood-sucking proboscis, a flea characteristic, turned
out instead to be the basal section of a long multi-segmented antenna. Such lengthy
antennae are structures conspicuous only by their absence in all bona fide
fleas, whose own antennae are tiny ones that for much of the time remain concealed
for their own protection within deep grooves located slightly behind the fleas'
eyes. And the reason for its laterally compressed body, another flea
characteristic, could now be clearly discerned as nothing more significant than
the inevitable physical outcome of having been flattened side-on with
considerable force by Backhouse when he struck it with his boot!
Further studies determined the tragic
truth that, far from being a truly extraordinary, exceptionally large flea, the
type (and only) specimen of Pulex
imperator was simply a decidedly ordinary, unexceptionally-sizeable, and
undeniably squashed nymph (juvenile stage) of the Oriental cockroach Blatta orientalis, a common invasive species
in England.
As documented in greater detail on p. 60
within the Proceedings of the
Entomological Society of London for 1859:
He [Westwood] also exhibited
an insect which he had received some time previously from Mr. Backhouse, of
Gateshead, as a gigantic flea, and which he had exhibited to the Society on the
4th of May 1857 (without, however, having previously had an opportunity of
carefully examining it), and for which he then suggested the name of Pulex Imperator
[sic]. He had, however, recently examined the insect more minutely, and
had ascertained that it was a very young larva of a Blatta [sic], much distorted by being
crushed flat in rather an oblique position, and with most of the limbs broken
off. A small portion of the base of the multiannular antennae was visible in
such a situation as to seem like a part of the mouth, but on microscopically
examining it, as well as the portions of the legs still remaining, it became
evident that the insect was not a flea, and on dissecting the mouth, its true
character was at once detected.
[This account was also included almost
verbatim within a communication concerning the imperial flea that was penned on
9 April 1894 by R. M'Lachlan of Lewisham, London, and published by the journal Entomologische Nachrichten in June
1894.]
To his credit, and in spite of the great
personal shame that he must have felt, at a meeting of the Entomological
Society of London held on 7 March 1859 (and attended by the afore-mentioned R.
M'Lachlan among others) Westwood publicly recanted his previous pronouncements,
quashing the imperial flea's taxonomic standing by unmasking its true nature as
a squashed cockroach nymph (and duly documented once again in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of
London). Thus ended the brief but infamous reign of the flea realm's
erroneous emperor.
Nevertheless, its crushed corpse lives on,
at least in preserved state, housed in the Oxford University Museum of Natural
History's very extensive Hope Entomological Collections. These were amassed by,
and duly named after, English entomologist Frederick William Hope (1797-1862),
who donated them to Oxford University after having founded a professorship
there. Together with Westwood, he was also a founder of the Entomological
Society of London in 1833.
Frederick
William Hope, painted in c.1851 by L C Dickinson (public domain)
Finally, for the sake of completeness,
here is that scant little account of the imperial flea that I wrote for and
included in my book From Flying Toads To
Snakes With Wings more than 23 years ago, but which fired my enthusiasm for
seeking out all of the additional information that I have now compiled in my
much more extensive documentation above:
As
for the enormous "imperial flea," formally described during the 1800s
by J.O. Westwood, its only known specimen (housed in the Hope insect
collections at Oxford University Museum) was later unmasked as a rather
squashed juvenile Blatta orientalis –
a common species of cockroach!
SUPER
FLEAS AND MOUNTAIN BEAVERS
Although the imperial flea is nothing
more than an imposing imposter, there really is a genuine species of giant flea
out there. And despite sporting rather less prodigious proportions than those
of the imperial flea, it is still more than sufficiently sizeable to claim with
ease the official zoological superlative of the world's largest flea species,
some specimens of which are up to one third of an inch long.
Yet, remarkably, whereas so many of its far
smaller kith and kin had been known to science and the general public alike for
untold centuries, this bloodsucking behemoth remained zoologically undescribed and
unnamed until little more than 100 years ago.
A
6-mm-long specimen of Hystrichopsylla
schefferi (© Ryan Eide/BugGuide – Creative Commons licence for more details; reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial
Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
Needless to say, such an outstanding
creature readily claimed its place in all three of my volumes on new and
rediscovered animals of the 20th and 21st Centuries. So
here is what I wrote about it in the most recently-published tome in this trio,
The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered
Animals: From Okapis To Onzas – And Beyond! (2012):
In 1921, publication of the
formal scientific description of Hystrichopsylla schefferi introduced
zoologists to the world's largest species of flea. When its original name, H.
mammoth, was disallowed on a nomenclatural technicality, it was renamed H.
schefferi, after its discoverer, agricultural researcher Theophilus
Scheffer, from the USA's Bureau of Biological Survey. He had collected the type
specimen whilst in Washington State, finding it inside a nest belonging to the
world's most primitive species of rodent – Aplodontia rufa, the
sewellel, though also referred to popularly but very inappropriately as the
mountain beaver (it is neither a mountain-dweller nor a beaver!). Other
specimens have been collected since, some of which are more than 8 mm (0.31 in)
long.
Subsequently nicknamed 'Super
Flea', H. schefferi appears to be a specific parasite of the sewellel;
most specimens have been obtained from individuals of this rodent, or from
their nests. A few have also been taken from the fur of mink and spotted
skunks, but as these are carnivores that are known to prey upon sewellels it is
likely that they received their over-sized parasites directly from their prey
or, once again, from its nests. Little is known either about the natural
history of 'Super Flea' or about that of its host, so the mystery of why the
world's most primitive rodent should be exclusively parasitised by the world's
largest flea has yet to be solved.
An
illustration of the sewellel or mountain beaver from 1918 (public domain)
Incidentally, the taxonomic and
nomenclatural niceties relating to this significant insect species are more
complex than I had space to elaborate upon in my above account, so here is the
full story.
What we now know to be Super Flea was
initially described by American zoologist Dr Edward A. Chapin under the name Hystrichopsylla schefferi in 1919 (in a
paper published by the Bulletin of the
Brooklyn Entomological Society), and whose type specimen was a 6.2-mm-long
female. But then in 1921, Chapin described a second, marginally bigger species,
which he named H. mammoth (in a paper
published by the Proceedings of the
Entomological Society of Washington), and which was based upon a
7.38-mm-long male type specimen plus a 7.53-mm-long female allotype specimen,
thereby making it the world's largest flea species (as it was even larger than H. schefferi). However, this latter,
bigger species was later shown to be one and the same as H. schefferi.
Nevertheless, for a while it was still
the rather more dramatic 1921 name H.
mammoth by which Super Flea was generally referred to. Eventually, to clear
up the confusion, the rules of nomenclatural priority were brought firmly into
play, and as the name H. schefferi
had been coined two years before H.
mammoth (albeit by the same person), the latter name was disallowed (i.e.
demoting it to a synonym of the former). So it is H. schefferi that is used by most (though still not all)
researchers for this species today. As a result, Super Flea is nowadays
technically deemed to have been described in 1919 rather than 1921, because even
though the two 1921 specimens were bigger than the 1919 specimen, this is
irrelevant now that the species that the 1921 specimens represented, H. mammoth, has been subsumed into H. schefferi. Who'd be a nomenclatural
taxonomist?!
DINOSAUR
PSEUDO-FLEAS – OR, GREATER MONSTERS HAVE LESSER MONSTERS…
The earliest known prehistoric
representatives of the true fleas that possess modern morphological features are
of comparably tiny size to their present-day counterparts, and date back at
least 40-50 million years, having been discovered embedded in both Baltic and
Dominican amber, but none dating back to Mesozoic times (65-250 million years
ago) are currently known. Due to their laterally flattened bodies, these
prehistoric true fleas most probably parasitized mammals and birds, just like
present-day true fleas do, rather than any form of scaly reptile.
In 2012, however, Chinese scientists
revealed the former existence of a hitherto-unknown lineage of prehistoric
parasitic insect, unrepresented by any present-day species, whose members were
considerably bigger than true fleas, whose bodies were flattened dorsoventrally
rather than laterally, and which, by dating from the Jurassic and Cretacous
Periods of the Mesozoic Era may well have targeted some of the mighty dinosaurs
as their preferred hosts. A memorable case of greater monsters having lesser
monsters upon their backs to bite them??
They were discovered independently in the
same Chinese sites by two different teams of researchers and are currently
known from four different species, all belonging to the specially-created genus
Pseudopulex, which translates as
false flea or pseudo-flea. As a result, scientists colloquially refer to these exceedingly
sizeable flea analogues as pseudo-fleas, thereby emphasizing that they were not
true fleas. In contrast, exhibiting their usual predilection for headline-grabbing
hyperbole over sober scientific authenticity, a fair few media reports have
instead burdened them with such melodramatic monikers as "monster
fleas", "gigantic horror fleas", and sundry other sensationalized
nicknames.
As readers who have seen such headlines
but without realizing their less than accurate nature may therefore expect me
to document these noteworthy insects here, I have indeed decided to do so, even
though they are not true fleas, but rather because it provides an ideal
opportunity to present the facts and dispel the fallacies associated with them.
Restoration
of the likely appearance in life of the prehistoric pseudo-flea Pseudopulex jurassicus (© Oregon State
University/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)
The four species of pseudo-flea so far
described are P. jurassicus, P. magnus, P. tanian, and P. wangi,
with most scientific work so far having been conducted upon the first two
species, both from China's Inner Mongolian region. As its name indicates, P. jurassicus lived during the Jurassic
Period, specifically during the mid-Jurassic, approximately 165 million years
ago. P. magnus, the biggest species,
is of younger age, dating from the early Cretaceous, approximately 125 million
years ago, P. tanian is the smallest
pseudo-flea species currently known, while in P. wangi the females were much larger than the males, indicating
sexual dimorphism. All four species bore longer claws on their feet than those
of true fleas.
The most readily obvious morphological
differences between the past and present true fleas and the exclusively
prehistoric pseudo-fleas are the shape and size of their bodies. In true fleas,
their body is laterally compressed, which greatly facilitates the ease of these
ectoparasitic insects' movement between hairs in furry mammals and feathers in
birds (and possibly in prehistoric feathered non-avian dinosaurs too) in order to
reach their host's soft skin that they can then pierce with their narrow, fine proboscis
and suck forth its blood, upon which they subsist.
In pseudo-fleas, conversely, their body
is dorsoventrally flattened (more like those of bedbugs and lice), which, while
greatly impeding these ectoparasitic insects' movement between hairs and
feathers, would readily enable them to squeeze between scales, in order to
reach the soft skin underneath, which they could then pierce using their broader,
coarser proboscis (see below), and thence draw forth the blood that they
subsisted upon.
Line
diagram and fossils of the prehistoric pseudo-flea Pseudopulex tanian (Wikipedia/public domain)
Consequently, scientists deem it likely
that whereas true fleas seek out mammals and birds as hosts, pseudo-fleas would
have instead parasitized reptiles, including scaly non-avian dinosaurs, and
possibly pterosaurs too.
As for body size: all of the pseudo-flea
fossils so far discovered are far bigger than true fleas – measuring from 17 mm
to nearly 22 mm (i.e. almost 1 inch long), whereas most true fleas are less
than 6 mm long (even H. schefferi
rarely reaches 8 mm long). Moreover, their mouthparts are proportionately much
larger than those of true fleas, and of particular note is that their proboscis
is not only broader but also serrated in a far coarser manner than the much
narrower, finely-serrated proboscis of true fleas. This in turn means that when
a pseudo-flea plunged its proboscis into the soft skin of its host, it is
likely to have caused the pseudo-flea's dinosaurian host much more pain than
the mammalian and avian hosts of true fleas experience.
In fact, to quote Oregon State University
zoologist and fossil insect specialist Prof. George O. Poinar Jr speaking about
pseudo-fleas in a newspaper interview from May 2012: "It would have felt
about like a hypodermic needle going in – a flea shot, if not a flu shot. We
can be thankful our modern fleas are not nearly this big". We can indeed!
BEE
LOUSE, OIL BEETLE, AND ANOTHER WAYWARD NOTION BY WESTWOOD
I mentioned earlier in this present
ShukerNature blog article of mine that Prof. J.O. Westwood lost no time in
publicly conceding that he had been wrong in previously declaring the squashed
remains of a juvenile cockroach to be those of a hitherto-unknown gigantic flea
– but the rapidity of his recant should not really come as any great surprise.
For notwithstanding his celebrated status as an entomologist of no little
eminence and esteem, when it came to promoting mistaken identifications the
good professor definitely had form.
In my previously-mentioned 1997 book From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings,
directly preceding my brief note concerning the imperial flea I had included
the following short account concerning another erroneously-classified insect,
the so-called bee louse Pediculus apis:
Equally delightful is the story of the bee louse.
Its victims included among their number the very eminent eighteenth-century
zoologist Johann Cristian Fabricius, who formally christened it Pediculus apis [a name that directly
translates as 'bee louse']. There is no doubt that this small insect does
indeed resemble a louse, but appearances can – and do – deceive. Many years
later, the 'bee louse' was revealed to be the first larval stage of the oil
beetle Meloë violaceus, but it is so
unlike any other type of beetle larva that Fabricius can certainly be forgiven
for taking its louse-like form a little too literally.
Engraving
of Johann Cristian Fabricius (public domain)
Incidentally, as a brief digression, I
wish to point out here that I obtained my information concerning the bee
louse's supposed scientific naming as Pediculus
apis by Fabricius (1745-1808) from Ewald Reitters book Beetles (1961), which states:
Johann
Cristian Fabricius (1745-1808) believed it to be a louse and named it Pediculus apis F., the bee louse.
However, I have since discovered that
this name was originally given to it by none other than the originator of the
taxonomic binomial system himself, a certain Carl von Linné (1707-1778), aka
Carolus Linnaeus. He duly dubbed it on p. 614 in the monumental 10th
edition of his pioneering work Systema
Naturae, which was published in 1758 (at which time Fabricius would have
only been about 13 years old).
Adult
oil beetle Meloë violaceus (public
domain)
Anyway, whereas the adult oil beetle is a
notably short-winged but otherwise fairly typical glossy-black coleopteran of
the free-living, non-parasitic kind commonly seen scuttling about in sunny gardens
and other dry flower-nurturing habitats across Britain, continental Europe, and
northern Africa, its first larval form, which hatches directly from this
species' eggs, is very different morphologically, and actively parasitizes
bees.
Known as a planidium, this tiny but highly
specialized larva's body is long and thin (filiform), ferruginous brown in
colour, very flattened dorsoventrally, and highly sclerotized, so it does
indeed look superficially louse-like and entirely unlike its adult form. Moreover,
each of its six limbs terminates in three long claws (as a result of which it
is sometimes called a triungulin, more about which later).
Planidium
of the oil beetle Meloë violaceus (©
Janet Graham/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.0 licence)
Climbing up the stalk of a nearby flower in
swarms and sitting in wait upon its blossom, the planidia use their claws to
latch onto any bee that arrives to sip nectar and collect pollen from the
flower, and these miniscule parasites are then carried by it (phoresy) back to
its hive, nest, or burrow (depending upon whether the bee is a social or
solitary species). Once there, the planidia duly lay waste to the bee eggs and larvae
present, as well as any stored pollen, devouring them hungrily as they
gradually metamorphose from one larval stage (instar) into another, until
eventually they pupate into the adult beetle form, after which they then exit their
apian host's domicile and live normal, non-parasitic beetle lives thereafter in
the outside world.
Due to its louse-like form and the
knowledge that it could be found inside bee hives, however, Linnaeus failed to
make any connection between the oil beetle's planidium larva and the adult oil
beetle. Instead, he mistakenly assumed that the planidium was a genuine species
of louse, which, as noted earlier, he duly christened Pediculus apis, the bee louse (not to be confused, incidentally,
with various highly specialized species of wingless dipteran fly, the braulids,
which are colloquially dubbed bee lice because they too parasitise bees).
Linnaeus,
painted by Alexander Roslin in 1775 (public domain)
Nor was Linnaeus alone in this
misconception – the afore-mentioned Fabricius also labored under it, as did a
number of other insect authorities too, including prominent French naturalist Léon
J.M. Dufour (1780-1865), who in 1828 named the bemusing little bee louse Triungulinus andrenetarum, from which
the term 'triungulin', often applied to such larvae, originates. Yet another
binomial name applied to this insect was Pediculus
melittae, in 1802, by English entomologist William Kirby (1759-1850).
By the mid-1830s, however, it was
becoming increasing accepted in entomological circles that the bee louse was
actually the first larva of the oil beetle. Even so, this view was not without
its skeptics, and one dissenting voice in particular was none other than that
of Prof. J.O. Westwood.
Engraving
of a youthful Prof. J.O. Westwood holding a goliath beetle (public domain)
In a Transactions
of the Entomological Society of London paper originally read by him at the Society on 6 June 1836, which dealt
with a bizarre taxonomic order of tiny parasitic insects known variously as
strepsipterans, stylopids, or twisted-wings (only the males are winged, the
female are both wingless and limbless), Westwood also considered the issue of
bee louse/oil beetle synonymity. Yet despite acknowledging that bee lice had
been directly observed emerging from oil beetle eggs, he was still not entirely
convinced that the former were indeed the first larval stage of the latter.
Instead, he speculated that perhaps the bee lice were of external origin and
had somehow penetrated the eggs of the oil beetle, thereby giving rise when
they subsequently emerged from these eggs to a misconception that they had
actually originated within them:
No one, it is admitted, has ever seen
the larva of Meloe, except
as one of these minute Pediculi
melitta, as Kirby calls them; and I have elsewhere
said that, notwithstanding all the apparent proofs of their being the larvae of
the Meloe, I cannot but think them in
some unaccountable manner or other to be parasites, not only upon the bees, but
also within the eggs of the Meloe. It
is true many observers have seen them hatch from the eggs of the Meloe.
Westwood even speculated that perhaps the minute parasitic stylopids
might actually be "the younger state of the Pediculus melittae". This is despite the notable fact that the
stylopids belong to an entirely discrete taxonomic order from all other insect
forms. Named Strepsiptera, it was created for them by none other than the
afore-mentioned William Kirby, in 1813, i.e. almost 30 years before Westwood's
above-quoted paper was published, so he was well aware of their taxonomic
distinctness.
Scale line drawing of male
(winged) and female (wingless) strepsipterans (public domain)
Happily, in
1851, distinguished English entomologist George Newport (1803-1854) revealed beyond
any shadow of doubt the extraordinary life cycle of the oil beetle. For he not
only had observed planidia being carried by Anthophora
bees into their nest, but also had described the later, recognizably beetle
larval stages in the nest's cells – and, in so doing, had thus confirmed the bee
louse's true taxonomic identity.
In conclusion, the histrionic and in
places quite hysterical histories of the imperial flea and the bee louse
readily demonstrate that not even the most experienced experts are immune to
error – but as they are, after all, only human, we should not be too surprised.
My sincere thanks go to Dr Darren J. Mann
for very kindly permitting me to include his photos of the imperial flea
specimen and its specimen labels within this article.
William
Kirby, who created the taxonomic order Strepsiptera for the tiny parasitic
stylopids or twisted-wings (public domain)
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