Infection of Cyclops with Coracidium of Oriental Diphyllobothrids and their Development to Mature Procercoid Stage

Abstract

Janicki and Rosen1 showed that certain copepod crustaceans belonging to the genera Cyclops and Diaptomus were the first intermediate hosts of Diphyllobothrium latum. Okumura2 found that Cyclops leukarti was the necessary first intermediate host of a species of Diphyllobothrium which he designated as “Sparganum mansoni”. Since considerable doubt has been indicated as to whether the spargana found in man and other vertebrates in the Orient belong to one of several species, the present writers have undertaken to study the life cycle of forms found in North China.In one series of cases eggs from naturally infected dogs and cats have been utilized as the starting point of the experiment; in another, spargana commonly found in the somatic musculature of the hedgehog, Erinaceus dealbatus, have been fed to uninfected dogs and cats, resulting in the development of these larvae into adult worms, from which, eggs were readily obtained. Morphological study of the mature worms in these cases has shown that the former ...