page_title: Colpocephalum californici
section_title: Extinction
hierarchical_section_title: Colpocephalum californici / Extinction
caption_attribution_description: A California Condor at the Condor Ridge exhibit of the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Photo by Chuck Szmurlo taken December 11, 2006 with a Nikon D70 and a Nikon 70-200 f2.8 lens.
context_page_description: Colpocephalum californici, the California condor louse, was a species of chewing louse which parasitized the critically endangered California condor. It became extinct when the remaining California condors were deloused and treated with pesticides during a captive breeding program.
context_section_description: In the 1980s, all California condors were brought to the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park for a captive breeding program. Conservationists treated all the condors with a pesticide to kill their lice, and so C. californici is now presumed extinct. This species' extinction is an instance of conservation-induced extinction.
  People were expressing concern about the loss of the California condor louse by the 1990s. One 1990 letter to the journal Nature began, "In the attempt to save certain species from extinction, for example the California condor, the black-footed ferret and so on, how much attention is being given to the natural parasites?" Another letter to Nature closed with "There may be conflicts in conservation needs, forcing us to bid farewell to the gorilla louse or the lice of the Californian condor while retaining their hosts. If so, we should do so in the full knowledge of what is being lost." The C. californici extinction is an often-discussed example when emphasizing the importance of parasite conservation both in academic works and elsewhere. One 2011 paper in the Annual Review of Entomology called this a "poignant example" of the loss of biodiversity, and noted that the role this species played in its host's ecology was not fully understood. It has also been pointed out that studying the genetics of C. californici could have provided information about the California condor's evolutionary history.
caption: California condor (Gymnogyps californianus)
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