Year: 1969
Type: article
Abstract: The Anatidae, like most groups o f verte brates associated with freshwater or marine environments, are likely to be infected with a wide range of metazoan parasites. Of these, the tapeworms (Cestoda) are amongst the most abundant and ubiquitous. In a search of the literature, Lapage (1961) recorded more than 100 species of these worms. Many of these species may be synonyms, but neverthe less the total number must be very large. Individual birds may be heavily infected — burdens of 20-30 worms were found quite commonly in wild Mallard Anas platyrhynchos at Slimbridge, Gloucester shire (Avery 1966b), and Mallard and Canvasbacks Aythya vallisneria have been recorded as carrying exceptional infec tions of 15,000 and 40,000 worms respec tively (Avery 1966b, Cornwell and Cowan 1963). The purpose of this paper is twofold: to review advances in knowledge o f the ecology of tapeworms in wildfowl since Lapage’s paper, and to describe some ex periments which were carried out at the Wildfowl Trust, Slimbridge, on the ecology of some of the commoner tape worms of ducks. N o attempt has been made to include work on the parasites of domestic ducks and geese, except where this is relevant to the ecology of wild birds, or to the problems of keeping wild birds in captivity.
Author: Robert A. Avery
Language: English
Subfield: Parasitology
Field: Immunology and Microbiology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1484195726