On the morphology and life history of a new mammalian blood-fluke—Ornithobilharzia dattai n.sp. (Preliminary report).

Abstract

Of the fifteen valid species of mammalian blood-flukes so far known, six have been originally described from India. Montgomery (1906) described Schistosoma indicum, S. spindalis and Ornithobilharzia bomfordi (Montgomery, 1906) Price, 1929. Datta (1932) found that nasal granuloma of cattle is due to a new schistosome, which was subsequently obtained and described as Schistosoma nasalis by Rao (1933). Rao & Ayyar (1933) obtained a new schistosome from pigs and described it as S. suis. Mudaliar & Ramanujachari (1945) described S. nairi n.sp., from an elephant, which was transferred to the genus Ornithobilharzia by Bhalerao (1947). Another new species of blood-fluke has now been found in Indian buffaloes and cattle. While studying the larval trematode fauna of the local aquatic snails, large numbers of a new schistosome cercaria were obtained from nine out of three hundred specimens of Limnaea luteola examined during November 1950. When the cercariae were administered to two guinea-pigs, a buffalo-calf and a bull-calf, they developed into an interesting blood-fluke referable to the genus Ornithobilharzia Odhner, 1912. Subsequently, three out of thirteen buffaloes examined post-mortem were found to be naturally infected with the same parasite. The morphology of the adult and of its cercaria is briefly described in this paper.