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The Behavioral Biology of Echinostomes

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Echinostomes as Experimental Models for Biological Research

Abstract

Worms that have adopted the parasitic way of life have often highly reduced sensory and behavioral capabilities and secondarily simplified or degenerated nervous systems. This is obvious when individual parasitic stages are compared with free-living organisms, and it may lead to the conclusion that behavior is unimportant for the fitness of parasitic worms. However, considering the life cycle of echinostomes as an example, we realize that nearly all developmental stages show behavioral patterns which play key roles for the survival of the species. Complex series of these patterns are responsible for the facts that: 1) miracidia hatch, find and invade their snail hosts, 2) sporocysts reach their habitats within the snail host, 3) rediae leave the sporocysts, move towards particular habitats, feed on the appropriate tissues and on the sporocysts and rediae of competing digeneans, 4) cercariae leave the rediae at a certain time, migrate through the snails, leave the snails, find their next intermediate hosts or habitats for encystation, enter the hosts and encyst in the appropriate sites within the hosts, 5) metacercariae leave their cysts at the appropriate site within the final hosts and select their particular habitats within the hosts, and 6) the adult worms select their sites within the hosts, feed properly, find their mate partners and successfully mate. This simplified review of digenean life cycle reveals that the behavior of the different stages are determining factors for the existence of these parasites.

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  1. Institute of Zoology I, University Erlangen-Nürnberg, D-91058, Erlangen, Germany

    Wilfried Haas

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  1. Lafayette College, Easton, PA, USA

    Bernard Fried

  2. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Thaddeus K. Graczyk

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Haas, W. (2000). The Behavioral Biology of Echinostomes. In: Fried, B., Graczyk, T.K. (eds) Echinostomes as Experimental Models for Biological Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9606-0_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9606-0_9

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