Family HYMENOLEPIDIDAE Perrier, 1897

Museums

Regional Maps

• Hymenolepinae Perrier, E. 1897. Vers (suite) - Mollusques - Tuniciers. pp. 1345–2136 in Perrier, E. (ed.). Traité de Zoologie. Paris : Masson et Cie Vol. fasc. 4 2138 pp. [as a tribe within the Taeniidae].

Introduction

The family Hymenolepididae is a large family of cestodes comprising 130 genera and more than 900 species. Most species (565) are found in birds with a smaller number (358) in mammals. The family is characterised by an armed rostellum, sometimes reduced or lost, lateral genital pores and a sacculate, sometimes reticulate, uterus. The most important feature of the family is that there are three or fewer testes per segment. An arthropod intermediate host occurs in virtually all known life cycles.

Czaplinski & Vaucher (1994) recognised four subfamilies within the hymenolepidids of birds: Diploposthinae Poche, 1926, Echinorhynchotaeniinae Mola, 1929 and Fimbriariinae Wolffhügel, 1899, as well as the very large subfamily Hymenolepidinae. In contrast, no subfamilies have been recognised within the hymenolepidids of mammarls. The cestode parasites of Australian birds have been poorly studied and so the records presented below undoubtedly underestimate the extent of the Australian fauna. In addition, with substantial changes in generic definitions, the current generic status of a number of Australian Hymenolepis sensu lato remains to be determined.

While the validity of the family Hymenolepididae is now generally accepted, a generally accepted scheme has yet to emerge: a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the family, based on either morphological or molecular data, has not been conducted and, as a consequence, the interrelationships among the genera remain unclear (Mariaux et al. (2017).

General References

Czaplinski, B. & Vaucher, C. 1994. Family Hymenolepididae Ariola, 1899. pp. 595-663 in Khalil, L.F., Jones, A. & Bray, R.A. (eds). Keys to the Cestode Parasites of Vertebrates. Wallingford, UK : Commonwealth Agriculture Bureaux International 751 pp.

Mariaux, J., Tkach, V.V., Vasileva, G.P., Waeschenbach, A., Beveridge, I., Dimitrova, Y.D., Haukisalmi, V., Greinman, S.E., Littlewood, D.T.J., MAkarikov, A.A., Philips, A.J., Razafiarisolo, T., Widmer, V. & Georgiev, B.B. 2017. Cyclophyllidea van Beneden in Braun, 1900. pp. 77-148 in Caira, J.N. & Jensen, K. (eds.). Planetary Biodiversity Inventory (2008–2017): Tapeworms from Vertebrate Bowels of the Earth. Lawrence, KS, USA : University of Kansas, Natural History Museum Vol. Special Publication No. 25. [113]

History of changes