pulicid

English

A pulicid, Xenopsylla cheopis (oriental rat flea)

Noun

pulicid (plural pulicids)

1. (zoology) Any flea of the family Pulicidae.
   • 1967, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Entomology Department, Pacific Insects, page 643:

     We do not question the corollaries of Jordan's postulate, namely that vermipsyllid fleas never had ctenidia whereas comb-less pulicids and hystrichopsyllids are the descendants of comb-bearing fleas (Holland 1959).

   • 2001, Diego P. Vázquez, Daniel Simberloff, “Chapter 6: Taxonomic Selectivity in Surviving Introduced Insects in the United States”, in Julie L. Lockwood, Michael L. McKinney, editors, Biotic Homogenization, page 114:

     These introduced pulicid fleas are cosmopolitan, having also been introduced by human transport to all continents except Antarctica (Lewis 1995).

   • 2008, Boris R. Krasnov, Functional and Evolutionary Ecology of Fleas, page 40:

     Two possible, not mutually exclusive, scenarios can be suggested. In the first, ancestors of the dipodine genus Jaculus dispersed to Africa (Black & Krishtalka, 1986) where they were presumably colonized by pulicids. In the second scenario, pulicids colonized jerboas switching from Gerbillinae which originated in Africa and dispersed to Asia no later than in the Miocene (Wessels, 1998).