Aix Marseille Université, Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Emergentes (URMITE), Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) 63, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) 7278, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) 198, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) 1095, 13005 Marseille, France.
Trends Parasitol. 2012 Dec;28(12):563-71. doi: 10.1016/j.pt.2012.09.003. Epub 2012 Oct 12.
Head lice and body lice have distinct ecologies and differ slightly in morphology and biology, questioning their taxonomic status. Over the past 10 years many genetic studies have been undertaken. Controversial data suggest that not only body lice but also head lice can serve as vectors of Bartonella quintana, and a better understanding of louse epidemiology is crucial. Here, we review taxonomic studies based on biology and genetics, including genomic data on lice, lice endosymbionts, and louse-transmitted bacteria. We recommend that studies of human lice employ morphological and biological characteristics in conjunction with transcriptomic date because lice seem to differ mainly in gene expression (and not in gene content), leading to different phenotypes.
头虱和体虱具有不同的生态环境，在形态和生物学上略有不同，这使它们的分类地位受到质疑。在过去的 10 年中，已经进行了许多遗传研究。有争议的数据表明，不仅体虱，而且头虱也可以作为巴尔通体 quintana 的载体，因此更好地了解虱子的流行病学至关重要。在这里，我们回顾了基于生物学和遗传学的分类学研究，包括虱子、虱子内共生菌和虱子传播细菌的基因组数据。我们建议对头虱的研究采用形态学和生物学特征，并结合转录组数据，因为虱子似乎主要在基因表达（而不是基因含量）上存在差异，从而导致不同的表型。
