Proceedings of the United States National Museum SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION • WASHINGTON, D.C. Volume 112 I960 Number 3438 STUDIES IN NEOTROPICAL MALLOPHAGA, XVII: A NEW FAMILY (TROCHILIP1IAGIDAE) AND A NEW GENUS OF THE LICE OF HUMMINGBIRDS By M. A. Carriker, Jr. I wish to express my thanks to Dr. J. F. Gates Clarke and other members of the Division of Entomology of the U.S. National Museum for having reviewed a preliminary draft of parts of the present paper. My thanks are also due to Colonel K. C. Emerson for the loan of material and other assistance. All measurements are in millimeters. I drew all illustrations accurately to scale by means of an eye-piece micrometer with a No. 10 eye piece, Nos. 16 and 4 objectives. On the basis of the nomenclature now currently applied to the Mallophaga of the Trochilidae, two genera of the suborder Amblycera are normally but not abundantly found on the Trochilidae: Tro-chiloecetes and Ricinus. The former are known only from the Tro-chilidae, but the latter are common parasites of many species of passer-ine birds. Any other genus of Mallophaga which may have been recorded from the hummingbirds are patently stragglers and should be disregarded. The genus Trochiloecetes is the more abundant of the two. I have specimens of it from 32 species of hosts ranging from Mexico to Bolivia, whereas I have taken Ricinus-\ike forms from only 20 species of hosts. Only 4 species of hummingbirds have yielded both genera of lice, and only once have both genera been taken on the 307 540744—60 1
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