Nature Blog Network

Saturday, October 4, 2008

The Ignoble Fleas




I always love closeup shots of the the inverts, great macro shots or SEM's like this one.

Couple that with excellent Ignoble Award winning research such as Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert, and Michel Franc of Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, France who discovered that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.

M.C. Cadiergues, C. Joubert, and M. Franc (2000) A Comparison of Jump Performances of the Dog Flea, Ctenocephalides canis (Curtis, 1826) and the Cat Flea, Ctenocephalides felis felis (Bouche, 1835). Veterinary Parasitology, vol. 92, no. 3, October 1, 2000, pp. 239-41. DOI: 10.1016/S0304-4017(00)00274-0

Classification for Ctenocephalides felis

Kingdom
Animalia

Phylum
Arthropoda

Class
Insecta

Order
Siphonaptera

Family
Pulicidae

Genus
Ctenocephalides

Species
Ctenocephalides felis

3 comments:

  1. Hum... I wonder how much funding that study got. Just read the set up, some how I was imagining something completely different, ala mini long jump sand pits.

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  2. I really love the colored SEM shots. Something I need to try one day.

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  3. Oh, I wish I had access to SEM!
    I could stand to have a colored SEM book of inverts as a coffee table book.

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