| Summary: | WOS: 000292686100008 Chewing lice were sampled from the birds captured and ringed between September-October 2009 at the Aras River (Yukari Ciyrikli, Tuzluca, Igdir) bird ringing station in eastern Turkey. Eighty-one bird specimens of 23 species were examined for lice infestation. All lice collected from the birds were placed in separate tubes with 70% alcohol. Louse specimens were cleared in 10% KOH, mounted in Canada balsam on glass slides and identified under a binocular light microscope. Sixteen out of 81 birds examined (19,75%) were infested with at least one chewing louse specimens. A total of 14 louse species were found on birds. These were: Austromenopon durisetosum (Blagoveshtchensky, 1948), Actornithophilus multisetosus (Blagoveshtchensky, 1940), Anaticola crassicornis (Scopoli, 1763), Cummingsiella ambigua (Burmeister, 1838), Menacanthus alaudae (Schrank, 1776), Menacanthus curuccae (Schrank, 1776), Menacanthus eurysternus (Burmeister, 1838), Menacanthus pusillus (Niztsch, 1866), Meromenopon meropis (Clay&Meinertzhagen, 1941), Myrsidea picae (Linnaeus, 1758), Pseudomenopon scopulacorne (Denny, 1842), Rhynonirmus scolopacis (Denny, 1842), and Trinoton querquedulae (Linnaeus, 1758). Four specimens of Holomenopon sp. collected from Nortern Pintail (Anas acuta), one specimen of Menacanthus sp. collected from European Robin (Erithacus rubeculae), and Menacanthus sp. collected from Eurasian Blackbird (Turdus merula) were not identified. Seven louse species; A. multisetosus, C. ambigua, M. alaudae, M. curuccae, M. eurysternus, M. picae, and P. scopulacorne are first records for Turkey. Christensen Fund; Whitley Fund; Kafkas UniversityKafkas University We thank the Aras River Bird Research and Education Center bird ringing team (Sedat INAK, Yakup SASMAZ, and the volunteers) and the rest of the KuzeyDoga Society (www.kuzeydoga.org) staff (Onder CIRIK and Emrah COBAN) for their help. We are grateful for the support of the Christensen Fund, the Whitley Fund, and the Kafkas University Research Fund. We thank the Turkey General Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks (DKMPGM), Igdir Directorate of Environment and Forestry for providing the research permits, and we are grateful to the residents of the Yukari Ciyrikli village (Tuzluca, Igdir) for their hospitality.
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