You are way, way too kinky for me.
All will be explained below.
With the wild birds we're really just screening for evidence of bird flu - it's a surveillance exercise. We do record a cause of death if that's obvious, but that's about it. We did also screen for Salmonella, but that seems to have stopped. I don't remember seeing any lice, though if anyone wanted any for a research project they could ask us and we'd keep a look out. Did you want some?
The answer to your question is "Yes". I am doing my PhD on chewing lice on birds, focusing on shorebirds. I'll be going to Japan and Australia this fall (I leave on Thursday) to collect material for this, and together with a planned trip to Vancouver and Philadelphia next spring, and proposed or potential collaborations with people in Manitoba, Chiba, Moscow, Antarctica (!), and somewhere in Illinois, I figure I got the shorebird part pretty covered, as most of them are in the Northern hemisphere anyway.
However, I am also required, as part of my PhD, to get material from all birds that have been seen 10 times or more in Sweden (where I live). This is because I am funded by something called the Swedish Taxonomic Initiative, which aim to make an inventory of all multi-cellular lifeforms of Sweden, catalogue and name them (if not done previously), and publish a series of books, six of which are already finished. I will eventually get to write the book on chewing lice on birds, and possible (if I have time and can get material) on mammals.
Much of my work is just going out catching birds and try to delouse them. I've been doing some catching of my own here in Gothenburg, but also stayed for three weeks at the Ottenby bird observatory last year, and in Padjelanta National Park (above the Polar circle, I think!) and the Ume Delta (northern Sweden as well), and for most kinds of birds this works out quite well. I have lots of material from passerines, shore birds, some birds of prey, and some ducks. However, some groups are virtually impossible to catch. This group includes ones that are rare (Arctic Warbler, Penduline Tit, European Serin), ones that are rarely ashore (Gannet, Puffin, Cory's Shearwater), and ones that are not very easy to catch (Pheasant, Quail, Capercaillie, Eagle Owl).
Thus, I am always trying to look out for ways to get lice from these whenever the opportunity arises. I have been at a rehabilitation home for injured and sick birds a few times, and searched for lice on Peregrine Falcons, Razorbills, Eagle Owls, and Goshawks, with varying success. A French PhD student who was working on bird flu sent me some material from Magpies, Flamingos and one other bird that presently slips my mind. I'm always looking for people who have various projects that I could participate in to collect lice when they are banding birds in the nests or so (like Merlins this summer in Padjelanta; we were supposed to catch also Long-tailed Skuas, Rough-legged Buzzards, Lapland Longspurs, Red-throated Pipits, and Red-necked Phalarope, but that never materialised).
Therefore, I'd be interested if you ever found any lice on any birds at all and, if so, if you'd consider sending them to me somehow? I don't know what kinds of permits would be required for that sort of thing from the British authorities, but there's nothing required to import them to Sweden. The Scottish bird fauna is similar enough to the Swedish one to be interesting. I would, of course, need to find these lice on birds collected in Sweden anyway, but having a larger material to work with would enable me to get more sequences for the same lice (I work so far only with DNA, but will start doing morphology in London this winter), would lessen the amount of time I'd need to look at some birds, and would, of course, be possible points of further study.
As to the last point, I can give a specific example. Though my primary focus is shorebirds, one of my papers will be a test to see if a certain group of lice (the subfamily Quadraceptinae) parasitic mainly on shorebirds is monophyletic. Therefore, I have sequenced a lot of other lice as well, from other groups of birds. When looking at lice, putatively of the same three or four species, from a number of ducks (Mute Swan, Eider, Gadwall, Mallard, Brent Goose Wigeon, Teal, and Red-breasted Merganser, as well as some sequences from GenBank), it seems like these putative species do not form monophyletic groups. Instead they form clusters that suggests that maybe each of these ducks have their own species of louse in these genera (1). This could be a very interesting study in its own right. Thus, duck lice of any species are interesting, as well as all shore bird lice (including terns, auks, gulls, and skuas).
Does this sound like something that could be doable?
As I said, I will be leaving for Japan and Australia on Thursday, and be gone until late November. Then I leave for London almost straight away, and won't be home until after New Years, as go from London to my parents' place, and then from there to Wien. However, if you find any lice, and would be willing to send them to me, I could still send you the address and my supervisor (2) will take care of them.
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(1) This has actually previously been the case, when Zlotorzycka, Eichler, and the rest of the East German crowd described new species solely on the basis of host relationships, rather than louse morphology.
(2) For anyone who owns the Helm Guide to Buntings and Sparrows, you may recognise the name Urban Olsson, who is the second author of that book; he is my supervisor. I also work for him part time, and also (indirectly) for Per Alström, whom some of you may recognise from the Helm guide to Wagtails and Pipits, as well as the Alström's Warbler
Seicercus soror, which I believe he was a bit surprised and ashamed to have named for him. I don't know the details, though. These two are the guys who are making it so very hard to know what to twitch when you see a small brownish/greenish
Seicercus or
Phylloscopus in Asia^^.
Can we try and guess?
)
