Neotrombicula fujigmo

Neotrombicula fujigmo
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Subphylum:	Chelicerata
Class:	Arachnida
Order:	Trombidiformes
Family:	Trombiculidae
Genus:	Neotrombicula
Subgenus:	Neotrombicula
Species:	N. fujigmo
Binomial name
	Neotrombicula fujigmo; (Philip & Fuller, 1950)
Synonyms
	Trombicula fujigmo Philip & Fuller, 1950; Tragardhula fujigmo (Philip & Fuller, 1950) ;

Neotrombicula fujigmo is a species of harvest mite. It is an ectoparasite of shrews and rats. N. fujigmo is found in the Indomalayan realm and has been recorded in Myanmar and India. Cornelius Becker Philip and H. S. Fuller described the species in 1950, initially placing it in the genus Trombicula. The specific epithet comes from the military slang FUJIGMO.

Etymology

The etymology Cornelius B. Philip and H. S. Fuller gave with their description says that it "commemorates a humorous, slang term evolved by soldiers of the Allied Forces in the Far East to express their impatience to return home after V-J Day."^[1] FUJIGMO is military slang and an acronym for Fuck you, Jack, I got my orders.^[4]^[5] Philip first saw this phrase, using the less common spelling FUGIGMO, in Japan at the end of World War II; he saw it printed over the door of an American officer's tent. The officer explained it was a slogan used to express soldiers' impatience to return home. Philip proposed this would be a good name for a species to Fuller, who agreed.^[6] The term FUJIGMO has also been described as "an expression of indifference and mild defiance"; after getting separation, members of the armed forces might become apathetic about what would happen to the rest of their unit.^[7] FUJIGMO could also accompany a refusal to obey someone who had been their superior after getting transfer orders but before physically relocating.^[8]

Philip was known for coming up with humorous, whimsical names for taxa such as Chrysops balzaphire ("balls of fire") and Tabanus rhizonshine ("rise and shine").^[9]^[10] The expletive nature of the etymology has led this species to be included in lists and discussions of taxa with unusual or humorous names.^[11] The entomologist Arnold Menke listed Trombicula fujigmo in a 1993 list of "Funny or Curious Zoological Names" with the instructions to "ask any WWII vet what 'fujigmo' stands for".^[12]

Distribution

N. fujigmo is found in the Indomalayan realm.^[2] As of 2021^[update] it has only been recorded in India and Myanmar.^[3] The type locality is 12 miles (19 km) north of Myitkyina, Kachin State, Myanmar.^[13] It has also been found in Northeast India,^[14] including Kanglatongbi [simple], in Manipur.^[15] Elsewhere in India, it has been recorded in Thiruvananthapuram district, Kerala.^[16]

Description

Only the larva of the species has been described.^[1]^[17]^[15] Eyes are in a 2/2 arrangement on the ocular plat of the idiosoma. There are 40 dorsal setae on the idiosoma, arranged 8-8-8(10)-10(8)-6. The gnathosoma has a palpal setal formula of B/B.NNB/7B.S and the palpal claw has three prongs. The scutum is subpentagonal and caudally rounded.^[15] The type host is the voracious shrew, Crocidura vorax. Paratypes were also collected from the Asian house rat, Rattus tanezumi.^[a]^[13] It has been found on the lesser bandicoot rat.^[16]^[18]

Taxonomic history

Philip and Fuller first described this species in 1950, placing it in the genus Trombicula.^[19] Their description was based on eighteen larval specimens (one holotype and seventeen paratypes) which the U.S. Typhus Commission collected in northern Myanmar in 1944–1945.^[13] The holotype larva was deposited in the U.S. National Museum. Paratypes were deposited in the U.S. National Museum, the British Museum (Natural History), the Rocky Mountain Laboratory, and the South Australian Museum, as well as the personal collections of G. W. Wharton, Takeo Tamiya, C. B. Philip, and H. S. Fuller.^[13] A 2021 listing of Trombiculid type specimens in U.S. National Entomology Collection, Smithsonian Institution, included four larval paratypes but did not include the holotype.^[20]

Philip and Fuller placed it in the autumnalis species group within Trombicula. They noted that T. autumnalis was the type species of Neotrombicula, a subgenus Arthur Stanley Hirst had named in 1925, however Philip and Fuller did not include any subgenera in their taxonomy of Trombicula. Instead, they placed it "provisionally in the genus Trombicula sensu lato".^[21] Trombicula fujigmo was also the combination Carl E.M. Gunther used in 1952.^[22] In 1952, George W. Wharton and Fuller included Neotrombicula as a subgenus of Trombicula, giving the species the name T. (N.) fujigmo.^[23]^[14] Audy also listed T. fujigmo as being within the subgenus Neotrombicula sensu stricto in 1953.^[24]

In 1952, Herbert Womersley included it in the genus Tragardhula;^[17] this was followed by a few other taxonomic works in the 1950s, including Charles D. Radford in 1954^[b]^[25] and J. Ralph Audy and colleagues in 1953.^[14]^[2] In 1957, Neotrombicula was itself given genus status, giving it its present binomial: N. fujigmo. Arachnologists differ as to if the genus Neotrombicula itself has subgenera or not. Taxonomists who do divide Neotrombicula into multiple subgenera place N. fujigmo into the nominotypical subgenus: N. (Neotrombicula) fujigmo,^[2] N. fujigmo has sometimes been placed in the bisignata group within Neotrombicula,^[26] but others have disagreed with this group placement.^[15]

Notes

^ Reported under the trinomen "Rattus rattus sladeni (Anderson)".
^ Written as "T. fujigma".

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Philip & Fuller (1950), pp. 53–54.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Nielsen, David H.; Robbins, Richard G.; Rueda, Leopoldo M. (2021). "Annotated world checklist of the Trombiculidae and Leeuwenhoekiidae (1758–2021) (Acari: Trombiculoidea), with notes on nomenclature, taxonomy, and distribution". Zootaxa. 4967 (1): 166. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4967.1.1. PMID 34186946. S2CID 235685842.
^ ^a ^b Stekolnikov, Alexandr A. (2021). "A checklist of chigger mites (Acariformes: Trombiculidae) of Southeast Asia". Zootaxa. 4913 (1): 138. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4913.1.1. PMID 33756596. S2CID 232338079 – via Zenodo: 4468331.
^ Sheidlower, Jesse, ed. (2009). "FUJIGMO". The F-Word (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 183. ISBN 978-0-19-539311-8.
^ Lighter, J. E., ed. (1994). "FUJIGMO". Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. Vol. 1. New York: Random House. p. 844. ISBN 0-394-54427-7.
^ McClellan, Patrick H. (2021). "Taxonomic punchlines: metadata in biology". Historical Biology. 33 (3): 366. Bibcode:2021HBio...33..354M. doi:10.1080/08912963.2019.1618293. S2CID 190873040.
^ Feldman, Gilda; Feldman, Phil (1994). "You're in the Army Now". Acronym Soup: A Stirring Guide to Our Newest Word Form. New York: W. Morrow. pp. 146–147. ISBN 0-688-12160-8.
^ Mann, Robert A. (2009). "Appendix 3. Etymology of Representative Aircraft Names". The B-29 Superfortress Chronology, 1934–1960. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co. p. 256. ISBN 978-0-7864-4274-4.
^ Arnaud, Paul H., Jr. "The Diptera Taxa Described by Cornelius Becker Philip with Bibliography (Culicidae, Pelecorhynchidae, Tabanidae)". In Arnaud & Lane (1985), pp. 87–88.
^ Arnaud, Paul H., Jr.; Lane, Robert S. "Editors' Preface and Acknowledgments". In Arnaud & Lane (1985), p. vi.
^ McCosker, John E. (Fall 2000). "What's in an Animal's Name?". Whole Earth. 102: 42.
"Names for sale; Taxonomy". The Economist. Vol. 378, no. 8464. February 11, 2006. p. 11. ProQuest 224012108.
Conniff, Richard (28 June 2010). "The Value of a Good Name". Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time: My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals. New York: W. W. Norton. p. 48. ISBN 978-0-393-06893-1.
Lalchhandama, K. (2014). "Taxonomic (r)evolution, or is it that zoologists just want to have fun?". Science Vision. 14 (4): 231. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-03-19.
^ Menke, Arnold S. (1993). "Funny or Curious Zoological Names". BOGUS. -2: 27. ISSN 1072-2556.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Philip & Fuller (1950), p. 53.
^ ^a ^b ^c Audy, J. R. (1957). "A checklist of trombiculid mites of the Oriental and Australasian regions". Parasitology. 47 (1–2): 217–294. doi:10.1017/S0031182000021946. PMID 13441319. S2CID 46451836.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Fernandes, Stan; Kulkarni, S. M. (2003). "100. Neotrombicula fijigmo (Philip and Fuller)". Studies on the Trombiculid Mite Fauna of India (PDF). Records of the Zoological Survey of India Occasional Paper. Vol. 212. Kolkata: Zoological Survey of India. pp. 274–276. ISBN 81-85874-99-9.
^ ^a ^b Samuel, P. Philip; Govindarajan, R.; Krishnamoorthi, R.; Rajamannar, V. (2020). "A study on ectoparasites with special reference to chigger mites on rodents/shrews in scrub typhus endemic areas of Kerala, India". Entomon. 45 (4): 285–294. doi:10.33307/entomon.v45i4.572. S2CID 234382785.
^ ^a ^b Womersley, H. (1952). "The scrub-typhus and scrub-itch mites (Trombiculidae, Acarina) of the Asiatic-Pacific region". Records of the South Australian Museum. 10: 23, 28–29.
^ Samuel, P. Philip; Govindarajan, R.; Krishnamoorthi, R.; Kumari, A. Krishna (2020). "A brief note on the Mite and Tick research" (PDF). Vector: Newsletter of ICMR-Vector Control Research Centre, Puducherry. 1 (1): 20.
^ Lane, Robert S. "Parasitological Contributions and Bibliography of Cornelius Becker Philip". In Arnaud & Lane (1985), p. 186.
^ Bassini-Silva, Ricardo; Jacinavicius, Fernando de Castro; Welbourn, Cal; Barros-Battesti, Darci Moraes; Ochoa, Ron (2021). Complete Type Catalog of Trombiculidae sensu lato (Acari: Trombidiformes) of the U.S. National Entomology Collection, Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology. Vol. 652. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Scholarly Press. p. 47. doi:10.5479/si.13546616.v1.
^ Philip & Fuller (1950), p. 50.
^ Gunther, Carl E. M. (1952). "A check list of the trombiculid larvae of Asia and Australasia". The Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales. 77 (1–2): 14, 49.
^ Wharton, H.S.; Fuller, G.W. (1952). A Manual of the Chiggers: The Biology, Classification, Distribution, and Importance to Man of the Larvae of the Family Trombiculidae (Acarina). Memoirs of the Entomological Society of Washington. Vol. 4. Entomological Society of Washington. p. 58. hdl:2027/mdp.39015006521671.
^ Audy, J. R. (1953). "Notes on the Taxonomy of Trombiculid Mites with Description of a New Subgenus". In Audy, J. R. (ed.). Malaysian Parasites. Studies from the Institute for Medical Research Federation of Malays. Vol. 26. Kuala Lumpur. p. 145.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ Radford, Charles D. (1954). "The larval genera and species of 'harvest mites' (Acarina: Trombiculidae)". Parasitology. 44 (3–4): 247–276. doi:10.1017/S0031182000018898. PMID 13214897. S2CID 12668699.
^ Kadosaka, Teruki; Tamura, Akira; Tarasevich, Irina V. (1995). "New Species of Neotrombicula (Acari: Trombiculidae) from the Southern Primorye Territory, Russian Far East". Journal of Medical Entomology. 32 (3): 381–383. doi:10.1093/jmedent/32.3.381. PMID 7616531.

Works cited

Arnaud, Paul H. Jr.; Lane, Robert S., eds. (1985). Contributions to the Study of Tabanidae (Diptera): In Honor of Cornelius Becker Philip on the Occasion of his 85th Birthday. Myia: A Publication on Diptera. Vol. 3. South San Francisco: Insect Associates. OCLC 12490775.
Philip, Cornelius B.; Fuller, H. S. (1950). "The harvest mites ('Akidani') of Japan and the Far East and their relationship to the Autumnalis group of trombiculid mites". Parasitology. 40 (1–2): 50–57. doi:10.1017/S0031182000017856. PMID 15401170. S2CID 35965728.