1. The Reed Lab is using lice to study how and when humans colonized
What? the world. When early humans left Africa and began colonizing other
parts of the world, they took a few travel companions with them –
parasites. Parasitic lice have been evolving with primates for 25 million
years. Each time the primates split into new species their lice did too.
Just like their primate hosts, two species of lice that live on chimpanzees
and humans today last shared a common ancestor 5-7 million years ago.
Head lice have been with us as long as humans have existed.
Tree of Human Evolution
Today
Modern
Humans
Jeff Gage/Florida Museum of Natural History
Neanderthals
Homo
erectus
2mya Hominids diversified over time
from a common ancestor about
2mya in Africa
Head lice moved with hominids
and jumped from Homo erectus
and Neanderthals to Modern Postdoctoral researcher Marina Ascunce collects
Humans. data using a molecular technique called PCR
3 million years ago (mya) (Polymerase Chain Reaction) to generate millions
of copies of fragments of the head louse genome.
