Pseudolynchia canariensis
species of insect
Pseudolynchia canariensis, the pigeon louse fly or pigeon fly, is a species of biting fly in the family of louse flies, Hippoboscidae.
Distribution
Pseudolynchia canariensis are species-specific (Columbidae) obligate ectoparasites potentially found in many parts of world where domestic pigeons are kept. Known from wild or feral hosts in continental Africa, the Mediterranean Sub-region, Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, Taiwan, Ryukyu Islands, the Philippines, Malaya, and Indonesia, as well as North America and South America in warmer latitudes.
Hosts
In 1931, G. Robert Coatney conducted an experiment to determine if pigeon louse flies would bite humans and survive on human blood and he found they could not. The only wild hosts are pigeons and doves (Columbidae). In domestic settings they have been recorded from 33 genera, 13 families and 8 orders of birds.
Disease vector
Pseudolynchia canariensis is the definitive host (sexual reproduction takes place in the insect vector) for the protozoan Haemoproteus columbae or pigeon malaria and transmits this parasite to Columbiformes. This parasite can be fatal to young rock pigeons in extremely infected birds. However, more often, H. columbae is quite benign and an experimental study found no difference in experimentally infected birds and those in the surrounding population when followed from nestlings through young adults and monitored for survival. The global distribution of H. columbae described in rock pigeons may provide evidence for the wide range of P. canariensis.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pseudolynchia canariensis” as species of insect. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of insect. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1420213. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1931.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pseudolynchia canariensis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.