Entomology for medical officers / by A. Alcock.

  • Alfred William Alcock
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Entomology for medical officers / by A. Alcock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    are distinguished by the tough or hard integument; by the head, which, as a rule, is either broadly impacted against, or turned right back on the thorax ; by the broad thoracic sterna ; by the often—though not always—indis¬ tinctly segmented abdomen ; by the reduction of the antennae ; and by the stout legs—sometimes with the 1st tarsal segment elongate—ending in remarkably strong grasping claws, the heel of which is almost as sharp as the tip. The proboscis, which is retractile, is otherwise like that of Glossina. Wings are sometimes present, sometimes vestigial, sometimes palp antenna caducous, and sometimes altogether absent; when present their veins may be complete, or may be incomplete and a good deal crowded together in the antero-internal part of the wing. Though the Pupipara are blood-suckers they do not, except fortuitously, attack man. The following families are included in this group :— (i) Hippoboscidce (Figs. 88, 89), parasitic on large mammals and on birds; (2) Streblidcz (Fig. 91), parasitic on bats; (3) Nycteribiidce (Fig. 90), also parasitic on bats ; (4) Braulidce, a minute wingless parasite of bees. In addition a small, unsegmented, headless insect, known as Ascodipteron, which was found buried in the skin of a bat in the Dutch East
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