Contributions to the Life History of the Brain Fluke of Newts and Fish, Diplostomulum scheuringi Hughes, 1929 (Trematoda: Diplostomatidae)

Abstract

In the summer of 1956, examination of 71 adults of the common newt, Notophthalamus (Syn. Triturus) viridescens (Raf.), collected in Mountain Lake, Virginia, revealed 100 percent incidence of a fluke (then tentatively identified as Diplostomulum trituri Kelley, 1934) infecting the brain and eyes. Attempts then made by the writer to obtain metacercariae or adults of the worm in laboratory mice and oneday-old chicks were unsuccessful, an experience suffered previously by T. C. Cheng and E. W. Lautensehlager (personal communication), who also worked on this problem at Mountain Lake. In 1957 the writer began further investigations with a trematode survey of snails in Mountain Lake. Three strigeid infections were found among 107 specimens of Helisoma anceps (Menke), the cercariae of which were subsequently shown to be larvae of the brain fluke of newts. Careful study of existing descriptions of similar cercariae indicate that this cercaria has not been previously described. Infected snails had the peculiar thick shell structure noted by Etges (1961) in snails from this lake infected with an echinostome, Cercaria reynoldsi.