Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T11:40:27.981Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An unusual structural organization to the gut of a digenetic trematode, Fellodistomum fellis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2009

D. W. Halton
D. W. Halton
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, The Queen's University, Belfast BT7 1NN
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

An ultrastructural examination of Fellodistomum fellis has revealed that the caecal lining consists of 2 distinct components: (a) cup-shaped digestive cells and (b) a pleomorphic layer of cytoplasm which supports and separates individual digestive cells. The digestive cells sequester host blood components within apical pockets formed by lamellated extensions of the cell surface, and undergo asynchronous, cyclical transformations in morphology associated with extracellular digestion and with the extrusion to the gut lumen of pigmented digestive residues. Histochemical tests and elemental analysis of the pigment suggest that it is a ferripor-phyrin, haematin. In the anterior portion of the caecum the supporting cytoplasmic layer is in continuity with the oesophageal tegument and snares the same ultrastructure. It is concluded that the digestive cells are supported by an extension of the foregut tegument.

Type
Research Article
Information
Parasitology , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , August 1982 , pp. 53 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bray, R. A. & Gibson, D. L. (1980). The Fellodistomidae (Digenea) of fishes from the northeast Atlantic. Bulletin of the British Museum Natural History (Zoology) 37, 199–293.Google Scholar
Chubrik, G. K. (1952). Larval stages of the trematode Fellodistomum fellis Nicoll 1909 from invertebrates of the Barents Sea. Zoologicheskii zhurnal 31, 653–8. (In Russian.)Google Scholar
Chubrik, G. K. (1966). Fauna and ecology of trematode larvae from molluscs in the Barents and White Seas. Trudy Murmanskogo biologicheskogo instituta 10, 78–166. (In Russian.)Google Scholar
Halton, D. W. (1967). Observations on the nutrition of digenetic trematodes. Parasitology 57, 639–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Halton, D. W. & Jennings, J. B. (1965). Observations on the nutrition of monogenetic trematodes. Biological Bulletin 129, 257–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Halton, D. W., Dermott, E. & Morris, G. P. (1968). Electron microscope studies of Diclido-phora merlangi (Monogenea: Polyopisthocotylea). I. Ultrastructure of the cecal epithelium. Journal of Parasitology 54, 909–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Køie, M. (1980). On the morphology and life-history of Steringotrema pagelli (Van Beneden, 1871) Odhner, 1911 and Fellodistomum fellis (Olsson, 1868) Nicoll, 1909 [syn. S. ovacutum (Lebour, 1908) Yamaguti, 1953] (Trematoda, Fellodistomidae). Ophelia 19, 215–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearse, A. G. E. (1968). Histochemistry, Theoretical and Applied, Vol. 1. London: J. & A. Churchill.Google Scholar