Polymorphus minutus
| Polymorphus minutus | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Polymorphus minutus | ||||||||||||
| ( Goeze , 1782) |
Polymorphus minutus ( Syn . : P. boschadis ) is a type of scratchworm (Acanthocephala) that lives as an intestinal parasite in wild and domesticated water birds such as swans , ducks , geese , grebes and rarely in chickens .
features
Female animals reach a body length of a maximum of 10 millimeters, the males remain significantly smaller with a maximum of around 3 millimeters. Unlike most other scratches, the hull is reddish in color. The width of the animals is a maximum of 0.85 millimeters. The proboscis (proboscis) is cylindrical to egg-shaped and has 16 rows of hooks, each with 7 to 10 hooks. The front part of the fuselage is studded with spikes, the fuselage is also divided by a constriction. The testicles of the males lie in the middle of the trunk and are arranged diagonally one behind the other; they also have long, tubular cement glands.
The eggs are yellow and long spindle-shaped with generic bulges in the middle layer on the egg poles. They have an average length of 110 and an average width of 19 micrometers.
Way of life
As an adult, Polymorphus minutus lives as an intestinal parasite , especially in the intestines of wild and domesticated water birds such as swans , ducks , geese and grebes . The worm rarely parasites domestic chickens when they are kept together with water fowl. Various amphipods of the genus Gammarus can be used as intermediate hosts .
literature
- Theodor Hiepe, Renate Buchwalder, Siegfried Nickel: Textbook of Parasitology. Volume 3: Veterinary Helminthology. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1985, pp. 398-399.