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Tunga penetrans is a species of flea also known as the jigger, jigger flea, chigoe, chigo, chigoe flea, chigo flea, nigua, sand flea, or burrowing flea. It is a parasitic insect found in most tropical and sub-tropical climates. In its parasitic phase it has significant impact on its hosts, which include humans and certain other mammalian species.
By stage 2 (day 1–2), penetration is complete and the flea has burrowed most of its body into the skin. Only the anus, the copulatory organs, and four rear air holes in fleas called stigmata remain on the outside of the epidermis. The anus will excrete feces that is thought to attract male fleas for mating, described in a later section.
Terrestrial species are often referred to as landhoppers and beach dwellers are called sandhoppers or sand fleas. The name sand flea is misleading, though, because these talitrid amphipods are not siphonapterans (true fleas ), do not bite people, and are not limited to sandy beaches.
Some people think there are insects called sand fleas that bite you. But some experts say the creature that bites you and the sand flea are likely entirely different beasts.
Sand flea may refer to: Arthropoda of the class Insecta: Sandfly; Chigoe flea Tunga penetrans; Crustacea of the class Malacostraca: Talitridae; Emerita, also known as mole crab; Culicoides furens, a biting midge known colloquially as "sand fleas", particularly in the Southeastern U.S. Operation Sand Flea, US operations in Panama
Although fleas cannot fly, they have developed powerful legs and are famous for being able to jump quite high in proportion to their tiny bodies — more than 100 times their body length, up to a ...
Flea bites in humans. Fleas feed on a wide variety of warm-blooded vertebrates including dogs, cats, rabbits, squirrels, ferrets, rats, mice, birds, and sometimes humans. Fleas normally specialise in one host species or group of species, but can often feed but not reproduce on other species.
In common with other sand fleas of the family Talitridae, P. platensis lives above the littoral zone in moist sand or rotting seaweed. [2] There appears to be competitive exclusion between P. platensis and the native Orchestia gammarellus on European beaches.