Fauna Europaea: Helminths (Animal Parasitic)

Abstract

Fauna Europaea provides a public web-service with an index of scientific names (including important synonyms) of all living European land and freshwater animals, their geographical distribution at country level (up to the Urals, excluding the Caucasus region), and some additional information. The Fauna Europaea project covers about 230,000 taxonomic names, including 130,000 accepted species and 14,000 accepted subspecies, which is much more than the originally projected number of 100,000 species. This represents a huge effort by more than 400 contributing specialists throughout Europe and is a unique (standard) reference suitable for many users in science, government, industry, nature conservation and education.Helminths parasitic in animals represent a large assemblage of worms, representing three phyla, with more than 200 families and almost 4,000 species of parasites from all major vertebrate and many invertebrate groups. A general introduction is given for each of the major groups of parasitic worms, i.e. the Acanthocephala, Monogenea, Trematoda (Aspidogastrea and Digenea), Cestoda and Nematoda. Basic information for each group includes its size, host-range, distribution, morphological features, life-cycle, classification, identification and recent key-works. Tabulations include a complete list of families dealt with, the number of species in each and the name of the specialist responsible for data acquisition, a list of additional specialists who helped with particular groups, and a list of higher taxa dealt with down to the family level. A compilation of useful references is appended.

Eucoleus contortus (Nematoda: Capillariidae), a parasite of Cairina moschata domestica (Anseriformes: Anatidae) on Marajó Island, Pará State, in Brazilian Amazon

“…The family Capillariidae Neveu-Lemaire, 1936 is one of the most important in the superfamily Trichinelloidea Ward, 1907Ward, (1879, with more than 300 known species parasitizing all vertebrate classes around the world (ANDERSON, 2000;GIBSON et al, 2014). The classification of capillariids is one of the most complex and unsatisfactory among nematodes, due to the scarcity of good morphological characteristics (SPRATT, 2006).…”

Prevalence and diversity of gastrointestinal helminths in free-ranging Asian house shrew (Suncus murinus) in Bangladesh

“…Helminth parasites in small mammals comprise four major taxonomic groups: The cestodes or tapeworms, the flukes, the nematodes or roundworms, and the acanthocephalans or spiny-headed worms. Almost all of the cestodes, flukes, and acanthocephalans, as well as many of the nematodes, require one or more invertebrate intermediate hosts for the development of their larval stages to complete their life cycles [ 9 ]. The vertebrate’s definitive host becomes infected either as a result of direct penetration of their tegument by larval stages or by ingestion of infective stages, the latter being the more usual route, especially in the case of helminths of terrestrial vertebrates [ 10 , 11 ].…”

Differential species characters of Baruscapillaria anseris and B. obsignata nematodes obtained from the domestic goose

“…): Baruscapillaria anseris, Capillaria anatis (Schrank, 1790), Eucoleus contortus (Creplin, 1839) (Skrjabin et al, 1957;Ryzhikov, 1967;Moravec, 1982). For example, there are two species of capillariids in domestic waterfowl of 17 countries of Europe, C. anatis and E. contortus (Gibson et al, 2014). However there are also reports of non-specific infections in goose, such as Aonchotheca caudinflata (Molin, 1858) and B. obsignata.…”