Records of fleas (Siphonaptera) from Delaware

Ashley C Kennedy; Wil S Winter; Alfred L Gardner; Neal Woodman; Scarlet A Shifflett; Sierra Redus; Jeffrey R Newcomer; Ralph P Eckerlin

doi:10.1093/jme/tjae069

Records of fleas (Siphonaptera) from Delaware

J Med Entomol. 2024 May 17:tjae069. doi: 10.1093/jme/tjae069. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Ashley C Kennedy¹, Wil S Winter^{1

2}, Alfred L Gardner³, Neal Woodman^{3

4}, Scarlet A Shifflett², Sierra Redus¹, Jeffrey R Newcomer⁵, Ralph P Eckerlin^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Mosquito Control Section, Division of Fish and Wildlife, Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, Newark, DE 19702, USA.
² Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA.
³ Division of Mammals, MRC 108, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.
⁴ Population Conservation Genetics Group, USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center at the Patuxent Research Reserve, Laurel, MD 20708, USA.
⁵ Wildlife Services, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Annapolis, MD 21409, USA.
⁶ Natural Sciences Division, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale, VA 22003, USA.
⁷ Department of Vertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.

PMID: 38754900
DOI: 10.1093/jme/tjae069

Abstract

We present an annotated checklist of fleas (Siphonaptera) known to occur in the state of Delaware based on an examination of Siphonaptera collections at the University of Delaware and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, as well as new specimens of fleas we collected from wildlife, other hosts, and tick flags. We review published records and compile them herein with our new records, which include 3 species previously unreported from Delaware. With these additions, there are now 18 flea species from 19 avian and mammalian hosts documented from Delaware.

Keywords: Ceratophyllidae; Ctenophthalmidae; Pulicidae; ectoparasite; vector surveillance.