5. Summary
The life-history ofSpirocerca lupi, of dogs, had not been studied in India so far. Preliminary experiments with cockroaches and scarabaeid beetles have proved that the cockroach,Periplaneta americana, is insusceptible as an intermediate host, while the beetle,Gymnopleurus koenigi F., harboured free and encapsulated larvae, identifiable as those ofS. lupi, both as a natural and as an experimental infection.Euoniticellus (=Oniticellus)pallipes F. may also be another scarabaeid intermediate host. Two dogs, fed with 96 and 30 larvae from beetles, showed a nodule each, and 16 and 3 immatureS. lupi, in 5 months and 7 days, and 4 months and 24 days respectively. Eggs of the worm had not been expelled in the stool of either dog, and the prepatent period may therefore be longer than these. Reference is made to two reports, by other workers, of abnormal hosts ofS. lupi, the donkey, horse and goat with juvenile worms in India, and a premature child with male and female adults in the intestine as a result of pre-natal infection, in Italy.
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Communicated by Dr. C. P. Gnanamuthu,f.a.sc.
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Anantaraman, M., Jayalakshmi, N. On the life-history ofSpirocerca lupi (Rudolphi, 1809), a nematode of dogs in India. Proc. Indian Acad. Sci. 58, 137–147 (1963). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03051946
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03051946