This three-year project grant from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) provides $538,419 to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation to investigate the evolutionary drivers of host-parasite associations in mammal sucking lice. Through high-throughput sequencing, machine learning, genomic and morphological analyses, the project will generate the first phylogenomic tree for sucking lice, build a database of louse traits and distributions, and characterize phenotypic adaptations. It will integrate these datasets to date louse diversification events, examine the evolution of louse traits in relation to host characteristics, and assess biogeographic histories to determine if louse specialization is primarily driven by history and adaptation to hosts, or if louse traits could enable broader parasitism but are restricted by dispersal limitations. Findings aim to further understanding of parasite host shifts and mitigation of emerging parasites. The research also includes training students in cutting-edge methods and developing public education resources around louse diversity.
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