A nyúl tüdőféreglárváinak és azok köztigazdáinak a vizsgálata

Abstract

SUMMARY Larvae of protostrongylid nematodes develop in the muscles of terrestrial snails and the adults live in the lung of mammals. The behaviour of protostrogylid and angiostrongylid larvae is interesting because they can infect such animals (and even humans) that does not consume living snails intentionally. In these cases the route of infection itself is not always clear. There had been many contradic-tory views for decades on whether these larvae infect mammals while they are in the tissues of snail or after getting out from the snail. The parasitosis caused by such worm species is a slowly developing, difficult or untreatable process, and it is therefore advisable to prevent the infection itself. The authors aim is to find out whether snails are consumed randomly by the strictly obligate herbivores, and how lungworm larvae get into such definitive host species.The authors investigated the connections between the Protostrongylus lung-worms of rabbits and hares and one of their common intermediate hosts, the Xerolentaobvia snail. They have found that the worm larvae cannot climb out of their own power from the snails’ body, but the snails themselves are not pre-ferred to eat by the lagomorphs, at least these snails do not belong to their usual diet. In the field there were not found lungworm larvae in snails smaller than the size of the Xerolenta snails, which ones can be accidentally consumed by the rabbits while snails crawl on plants. On the surface of the haulm of grasses the authors found larvae released from snails in only one case. The larvae released from the snails’ body artificially are only viable for hours at most. The authors assume that peculiar environmental conditions and the active involvement of the living snail are necessary for the release of the larvae and getting in the final host. The conditions which facilitate the way of infections are so far unknown but it was supposed that the night is the preferable time of the day for the transmission of larvae from the snails to the final hosts because the snails move more at night than during the day and the rabbits also like to graze at night.