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Abstract The Philopterus Complex includes several lineages of lice that occur on birds. The complex includes the genera Philopterus (Nitzsch, 1818; Psocodea: Philopteridae), Philopteroides (Mey, 2004; Psocodea: Philopteridae), and many other lineages that have sometimes been regarded as separate genera. Only a few studies have investigated the phylogeny of this complex, all of which are based on morphological data. Here we evaluate the utility of nuclear and mitochondrial loci for recovering the phylogeny within this group. We obtained phylogenetic trees from 39 samples of the Philopterus Complex (Psocodea: Philopteridae), using sequences of two nuclear (hyp and TMEDE6) and one mitochondrial (COI) marker. We evaluated trees derived from these genes individually as well as from concatenated sequences. All trees show 20 clearly demarcated taxa (i.e., putative species) divided into five well-supported clades. Percent sequence divergence between putative species (~5–30%) for the COI gene tended to be much higher than those for the nuclear genes (~1–15%), as expected. In cases where species are described, the lineages identified based on molecular divergence correspond to morphologically defined species. In some cases, species that are host generalists exhibit additional underlying genetic variation and such cases need to be explored by further future taxonomic revisions of the Philopterus Complex. 

MyrsideaWaterston is the most diverse genus of chewing lice, primarily parasitizing perching birds (Passeriformes), which is the most speciose avian order.Myrsideaalso parasitize several hosts from non‐passerine groups, including toucans, barbets, woodpeckers (Piciformes) and hummingbirds (Apodiformes). To examine host specificity, host switching and generic limits, we reconstructed a phylogeny of the avian feather louse genusMyrsideausing DNA sequence data from two fragments of the mitochondrial COI gene and a fragment of the nuclear EF‐1α gene for 152Myrsideaspecimens collected from 23 avian host families. Unlike other highly diverse louse genera, only a small proportion ofMyrsideaspecies parasitize more than one host species. We found that host family has significant phylogenetic signal on theMyrsideaphylogeny. These results suggest thatMyrsideais generally highly host‐specific, with some exceptions where host switching is important. We found that there are two separate groups ofMyrsideathat parasitize toucans, and that both are nested withinMyrsideafound on perching birds, suggesting that these toucan ectoparasites may have arisen from two independent host switching events. Lastly, representatives of the genusRamphasticolaCarriker, which was originally described as a distinct genus due to a suite of morphologically unique characters, falls in with a strongly supported clade ofMyrsideaparasitizingRamphastostoucans, and therefore we definitively placeRamphasticolaas a synonym ofMyrsidea.