“Believing that it is always best to study some special group, I have, after deliberation, taken up domestic pigeons,” wrote one Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species. Four years earlier, Darwin ...

How well lice are able to latch onto pigeon flies and catch a lift to new bird hosts affects how the lice evolve. Lice species carried aloft by flies spread to more species and tend to speciate at ...

Dec. 8, 2003 – University of Utah biologists twirled louse-infested bird feathers on an electric fan and flew pigeons and doves like kites on strings in a study that found small lice stick to small ...

Biologists drove the divergence of different-sized feather lice from a single population. In four years, the evolved lice had trouble mating with each other -- a sign of speciation. A few years ago, ...

Next time you shake your fist at the pigeon that pooped on your freshly washed car, take a moment to ponder this: That bird's forefather may have been a highly decorated World War II hero. No really.

Going to the trouble of molting doesn’t really get rid of a bird’s lice after all. Furthermore, flying doesn’t blow off tough lice–unless a bird wears nail polish. Thus go the latest bulletins from ...