Moniliformis moniliformis
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Moniliformis moniliformis |
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| Moniliformis moniliformis | ||||||||||||
| Brakeman , 1819 |
Moniliformis moniliformis is a type of scratchworm (Acanthocephala), whichlivesas an intestinal parasite mainly in rodents and other small mammals and causes acanthocephalosis in them accordingly. It is also a potential intestinal parasite in humans and many other mammals.
features
Female animals reach a body length of up to 27 centimeters, the males remain significantly smaller with a maximum of around 4.5 centimeters. The width of the animals is around one to 1.5 millimeters. The animals have a trunk that appears strongly segmented from the outside, almost like a string of pearls, but there is no real segmentation. The proboscis (proboscis) is club-shaped and has 12 to 14 rows of hooks that are not strictly arranged, each consisting of seven to eight hooks, with the hooks on the base of the trunk being particularly small. The two-layer proboscis sheath and the thread-like Leminiski are relatively short.
The females, like all Archiacanthocephala, have a dorsal and a ventral ligament sac in the pseudocoel , the walls of which, unlike those of the Palaeacanthocephala, do not dissolve, and the giant scratchers have protonephridia . The males have six to eight testes in the body of the animals.
The eggs are oval and have only thin covering membranes. They have an average length of 67 and an average width of 32 microns.
distribution
Like its hosts, Moniliformis moniliformis is distributed worldwide. Human infections have also been reported from all continents.
Way of life
Moniliformis moniliformis lives as an adult animal as an intestinal parasite , especially in the intestines of smaller mammals, especially rodents such as rats , mice , dormice and other dormice or hamsters , but can also be predators such as cats , dogs and martens , insect eater such as hedgehogs and moles and in very rarely infect humans and other primates .
The eggs get on and into the ground with the faeces of the host animals and are mainly ingested by cockroaches , which serve as intermediate hosts . They develop into the Acanthella and Cystacanthus stages, in which the larvae are in turn consumed as food by their final hosts. In the intestine, the scratch digs into the muscle tissue of the small intestine , the tunica muscularis , with the help of the hooked proboscis , and gets caught there.
Relevance as a human parasite
As a parasite for humans, Moniliformis moniliformis only plays a very insignificant role. In principle, humans can be considered as ultimate hosts, but the infection is extremely unlikely and therefore very rare. The normal way to get infected with the cystacanthus is to eat the intermediate host. In 2007, for example, the case of a small child in Iran became known after taking dirt and a cockroach in its mouth.
literature
- Theodor Hiepe, Renate Buchwalder, Siegfried Nickel: Textbook of Parasitology. Volume 3: Veterinary Helminthology. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1985, pp. 394-395.
Web links
- Portrait in the Animal Diversity Web ( Memento from April 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ F. Berenji, A. Fata, Z. Hosseininejad: A case of Moniliformis moniliformis (Acanthocephala) infection in Iran. In: Korean Journal of Parasitology. 45 (2), 2007, pp. 145-148, PMID 17570979 .