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A louse's egg is commonly called a nit. Many lice attach their eggs to their hosts' hair with specialized saliva ; the saliva/hair bond is very difficult to sever without specialized products. Lice inhabiting birds, however, may simply leave their eggs in parts of the body inaccessible to preening , such as the interior of feather shafts.
Head louse egg (nit) attached to hair shaft of host. Like most insects, head lice are oviparous. Females lay about three or four eggs per day. Louse eggs (also known as nits), are attached near the base of a host hair shaft. [11] [12] Eggs are usually laid on the base of the hair, 3–5 mm off the scalp surface.
The life cycle of the body louse consists of three stages: egg, nymph, and adult. Eggs (also called nits, see head louse nits) are attached to the clothes or hairs by the female louse, using a secretion of the accessory glands that holds the egg in place until it hatches, while the nits (empty egg shells) may remain for months on the clothing ...
This condition is caused by body louse (Pediculus humanus humanus, sometimes called Pediculus humanus corporis), [20] a louse that infests humans and is adapted to lay eggs in clothing, rather than at the base of hairs, and is thus of recent evolutionary origin.
The presence of nits alone, however, is not an accurate indicator of an active head louse infestation. Generally, white nits are empty egg casings, while brown nits may still contain viable louse larva. One way of determining the nit is to squeeze it between two fingernails; it gives a characteristic snapping pop sound as the egg bursts.
Pubic lice (Pthirus pubis) have three stages: the egg (also called a nit), the nymph, and the adult. They can be hard to see and are found firmly attached to the hair shaft. They are oval and usually yellow to white. Pubic lice nits take about 6–10 days to hatch. The nymph is an immature louse that hatches from the nit (egg).
Argulus foliaceus, also known as the common fish louse, is a species of fish lice in the family Argulidae. [1] It is "the most common and widespread native argulid in the Palaearctic " [ 2 ] and "one of the most widespread crustacean ectoparasites of freshwater fish in the world", considering its distribution and range of hosts. [ 3 ]
Psocodea is a taxonomic group of insects comprising the bark lice, book lice and parasitic lice. [2] It was formerly considered a superorder, but is now generally considered by entomologists as an order.