- Description
- Specifications
Extremely Rare Specimen on Dominican Amber
Museum Quality FLEA
Order SIPHONAPTERA (from greek: Siphon = hollow tube + a = without + ptera= wings ) or APHANIPTERA ( from greek Aphanes = invisible + ptera = wings )
Suborder PULICOMORPHA - Family: incertae sedis
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Fleas are wingless ectoparasitic insects of mammals and birds with holometabolic metamorphosis.
Larvae have legless worm-like body covered with sparse bristles; the head is reduced, eyeless, with chewing mouthparts.
The body of adult fleas is laterally compressed; this shape and prehensile claws of legs help them to move through the fur or the feathers of their host; a row of large bristles is often present on head and thorax.
Mouthparts are adapted for piercing skin and sucking blood of their host.
Fleas have long legs; the hind pair is the longest and strongest and allows them to jump about 7 inches (17.8 centimeters) vertically or 13 inches (33 centimeters) horizontally. In human proportions, that's a 250-foot (76-meter) vertical jump or a 450-foot (137-meter) horizontal jump.
Fleas transmit pathogens that cause disease in humans and other animals and some species of rat fleas are the primary vectors of Yersinia pestis, the bacterial pathogen for bubonic plague.
A huge pandemic of this lethal disease caused the” Black Death”, killing in the fourteenth century ¼ of the European population.
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Only a few specimen of fossil fleas from Dominican amber are currently known.
Seven undescribed specimens belong to the family Rhopalopsyllidae (Poinar, 1995).
Two described specimens belong to the family Pulicidae, and both specimens are new species.
The first one, Pulex larimerius, from the amber collection of the American Museum of Natural History, is preserved in a piece of amber also containing very rare strands of hairs, confirming that it fed on mammals (Lewis and Grimaldi, 1997).
The other one, Eospilopsyllus Kobberti, from the amber collection of the Stuttgard National Museum of Natural History, is preserved in a piece of amber that contains much plant debris, coprolites, two mites, two springtails, one orthopteran larva and various dipterans (Perrichot and Beaucournu, 2012)
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This specimen is preserved in a piece of amber excavated in La Toca Mine, and was bought directly from the miners.
The piece contains also plant debris, two winged termites and a silverfish.
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REFERENCES
- Boucot A.J., Poinar G.O., Fossil Behavior Compendium, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2010,45, fig.59
- Grimaldi D.A., Hengel M.S., Evolution of the Insects, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, 755pp.
- Perrichot V, Beaucournu, JC, Velten J, First extinct genus of a flea (Siphonaptera: Pulicidae) in Miocene amber from the Dominican Republic, Zootaxa, 2012, 3438:54-61.
- Poinar G.O., Life in amber, Stanford University Press, 1992, 189, fig.99.
- Poinar G.O, Fleas (Insecta, Siphonaptera) in Dominican amber. Medical Science Research, 1995, 23,789.
-Poinar G.O., Poinar R., The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World, Princeton University Press, 1999, 163, fig.59.
