Review article: in vitro rearing of Mallophaga

From time to time, a number of attempts have been made by various workers to rear the mallophagan species in vitro. Some of the species have been successfully reared while some of them could be reared for shorter periods but others could not be reared at all. This may be on account of diverse temperature, humidity and nutritional requirements of various species. In the present article an attempt has been made to review the work done for in vitro rearing of Mallophaga. The different aspects like the temperature, humidity, nutritional requirements of mallophagan species, the methodology used by different workers, the optimum conditions for better rearing of mallophagan species and also some of the practical difficulties involved for their rearing, survival, egg laying, morphogenesis and hatching have been discussed.