The Present Status of the Amphistome Problem

Abstract

While working on the amphistomes in the Congo Collection of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, it has been necessary to review the literature on this group of trematodes. In an earlier paper (1917), the writer described certain amphistomes from reptiles and birds and submitted an arrangement to show the probable relationship of the reptilian and avian amphistomes to those of other vertebrates. The amphistomes of fishes had been studied by Daday (1907), those of frogs by Cohn (1904) and Johnston (1912), while the mammalian species had been the subject of extensive papers by Fischoeder (1903) and Stiles and Goldberger (1910). Many of the descriptions were fragmentary, knowledge of the forms was incomplete, and the classification of Stiles and Goldberger was received with severe criticism, especially by Braun (1911), Odhner (1911) and Looss (1912). In this paper Looss described the lymphatic systems of Schizamphistomum scleroporum and Paramphistomum gigantocotyle, and announced (p. 358) that for many years he had been engaged in preparing a classification of the amphistomes which would be based on the form of the lymph and excretory systems and the structure of the copulatory apparatus.