Brueelia schoddei (Mey, 2017)

Plesionirmus schoddei Mey, 2017: 145 species inquirenda.

Brueelia schoddei – Gustafsson et al. 2019b: 266.

Type host

Manorina melanocephala (Latham, 1802) – noisy miner, erroneous host.

Type locality

Dresden, Germany (captive host).

Remarks

Brueelia schoddei was originally described from Manorina melanocephala, a honeyeater (Meliphagidae Vigors, 1825) kept in captivity in Germany. As argued by Gustafsson et al. (2019b), the morphological characters of this species indicate that it belongs in the Br. alophoixi species group, suggesting that the natural host of this species is a bulbul. The association of Br. schoddei with Ma. melanocephala was most likely caused by straggling from another bird kept in captivity. A second species of Brueelia belonging to the same ‘ Plesionirmus ’ group was mentioned by Mey (2017: 145) having been collected from skins of the same honeyeater species from South Australia. No bulbuls are native to Australia, but the red-whiskered bulbul, Pycnonotus jocosus (Linnaeus, 1758), has been introduced to New South Wales (Paton 1985) and is locally common in Southeast Australia (Menkhorst et al. 2017). It is possible that this specimen is a straggler from a red-whiskered bulbul, but no details were given by Mey (2017), other than the statement that this specimen was not conspecific with Br. schoddei.

We have examined material of the Brueelia -complex from 28 species of honeyeaters from across their range, including lice from Ma. melanocephala. None of these lice belonged to the genus Brueelia. Genera in the Brueelia -complex that naturally occur on honeyeaters are Guimaraesiella Eichler, 1949, Melibrueelia Valim & Palma, 2014, Aratricerca Gustafsson & Bush, 2017, and Melinirmus Mey, 2017.

Attempts to contact Eberhard Mey to examine his specimens, or to get more information about their morphology, have not been productive. Specimens described by Mey (2017) will supposedly be deposited in the Zentralmagasin Naturwissenschaftlicher Sammlungen Halle/Saale, but they are currently not available. Ultimately, an examination of the type specimens of this species, and the specimen collected from a noisy miner in the wild, will be necessary to establish the true identity of Br. schoddei, and to establish the natural host of this species.