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On Ilisha parthenogenetica, Southwell and Baini Prashad, 1918, from the Pyloric Caeca of a Fish, Hilsa ilisha (Ham. Buch.), and a Comparison with other Plerocercoid Larvae of Cestodes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2009
Extract
In 1918 Southwell and Baini Prashad1 published a description of an unsegmented Cestode parasite—Ilisha parthenogenetica—which they discovered in the “mesentery” of the common edible Indian Shad, Hilsa ilisha. This minute parasite, according to these authors, “appears to be of very great systematic importance, and…further reproduces itself in a manner not before known amongst the Cestoda.” In justification of these general remarks, they make, among others, the following statements: (1) the parasite, though of the well-known Piestocystis larva type, becomes sexually mature and resides in a cyst formed from the tissues of the mesentery; (2) these cysts are so numerous in every individual fish examined that the mesentery becomes transformed into “a massive liver-like organ in which the various coils of the intestine appeared merely as tubes embedded therein”; (3) though two lateral main excretory canals are described, yet there is no terminal excretory aperture: the excretory system “is closed in all stages of [the parasite's] life-history”; (4) the whole of the parenchyma is “filled up with enormous numbers of minute egg-cells. Besides the eggs, morulae and other higher stages in the development of the young were also present in the intima.” In other words, the egg-cells “develop in the body of the parent to form young worms identical in structure and appearance with the parent”; (5) the young worms “escape through a temporary aperture which is formed in the middle of the rostellum, anteriorly,” and, when the old cyst has been ruptured, they become “scattered in the mesentery, the [new] cyst not having been secreted at this stage.”
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1923
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