Vernon Kellogg, Host-Switching, and Cospeciation: Rescuing Straggled Ideas

Cospeciation and host-switching have become central concepts in host–parasite coevolutionary studies (Brooks, 1981; Hafner and Nadler, 1988, 1990; Brooks and McLennan, 1993; Page, 1993, 1994). Parasite speciation may either be concomitant with and resulting from host speciation (cospeciation) or follow the colonization of a “new” host from an existing one (host-switching). Historical summaries that deal with these concepts (Klassen, 1992; Brooks and McLennan, 1993; Hoberg et al., 1997) credit the origin of one or both of these concepts to Vernon Lyman Kellogg, an entomologist at Stanford, who specialized on the taxonomy and distribution of the mallophagan lice of birds and mammals. The issue is not without its intrigue and controversy however; another leading mallophagan systematist of the time, Wolfdietrich Eichler (Eichler, 1942, 1948), apparently accused Kellogg of “stealing” the idea of...