''Menacanthus'' is a genus of

chewing lice The Mallophaga are a possibly paraphyletic section of lice Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been reco ...

which parasitise birds. The taxonomy of this genus is highly uncertain. Most taxonomies have given this genus as having over a hundred species, but recent studies have synonymised dozens of species and found other names to be invalid. Some ''Menacanthus'' species remain to be discovered, or are synonymised in error. ''Menacanthus'' lice feed on the blood of a wide variety of birds, including

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...

s, by piercing the quills of feathers and gnawing the

epidermis The epidermis is the outermost of the three layers that comprise the skin, the inner layers being the dermis and hypodermis. The epidermis layer provides a barrier to infection from environmental pathogens and regulates the amount of water rele ...

. In doing so, they can spread disease and lower egg production. In ''Menacanthus stramineus'', eggs are incubated for four or five days, each of the three nymphal stages lasts for about three days, and adult life for about twelve days. Females produce as many as four eggs in a day, averaging 1.6 eggs a day, with egg production peaking 5–6 days after reaching adulthood. On sparrows, ''Menacanthus'' lice are particularly common, and are found in many different niches, consuming blood and feathers.

References

Lice Insect genera Parasites of birds {{louse-stub