The feather louse genus Mulcticola Clay et Meinertzhagen, 1938 (Phthiraptera: Philopteridae) from Brazil, with descriptions of five new species and catalogue for species described in the genus.

Abstract

Five new species of Mulcticola Clay et Meinertzhagen, 1938 are described and illustrated from Brazil. These new species and their hosts are: Mulcticola sicki sp. n. from the sand-coloured nighthawk, Chordeiles rupestris rupestris (Spix), Mulcticola bacurau sp. n. from the common pauraque, Nyctidromus albicollis (Gmelin), Mulcticola tendeiroi sp. n. from the long-trained nightjar, Macropsalis forcipata (Nitzsch), Mulcticola piacentinii sp. n. from the short-tailed nighthawk, Lurocalis semitorquatus semitorquatus (Gmelin) (type-host) and L. s. nattereri (Temminck), and Mulcticola parvulus sp. n. from the little nightjar, Setopagis parvula (Gould). These species were compared primarily with Mulcticola nacunda Carriker, 1945 from the nacunda nighthawk, Chordeiles nacunda nacunda (Vieillot), which is one of the species of Mulcticola previously recorded in the Neotropical region. All the five new species described herein differ from their congeners by exclusive characters such as the shape of anterior dorsal head plate, metasternal plate, subvulvar plates in females and genitalia in males. We increased the number of species in Mulcticola to 18 in total, with seven of them now known from the Neotropics. We present the main morphological characters to distinguish Mulcticola from other species of the Philopteridae parasitising Caprimulgiformes and also compile a detailed catalogue for species included in this louse genus.