A Békés Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 34. (Békéscsaba, 2011)
Csobai Erzsébet - Majoros Gábor: A nyulak tüdőférgeinek köztigazdái és a végleges gazda fertőződésének módja
A nyúlok tüdőférgeinek köztigazdái és a végleges gazda fertőződésének módja snails spontaneously. The larvae were unable to leave the body of dead snails too. Therefore We suppose that these snails are too big for consumption by hares or rabbits so they do not serve as infective intermediate host of lungworms but such snails are dead ends of these larvae. We have found remnants of shells in faeces of wild hares in very small quantity. These shells were the remnants of minute species with a full grown size reaching some millimetres only. In those habitats where lugworm infected hares were living, there were much more minute snail species than big one, and the young specimens of the large sized species were also more numerous as the adults. Therefore specimens with small size appeared in overwhelming majority on these places. We could not find any minute species to be infected by lungworm larvae in nature, but we were able to infect them with Protostrongylus larvae artificially. We infected Vallonia costata and Truncatellina cylindrica snails (size 2 and 1 mm respectively) with Protostrongylus larvae collected from faeces of wild hares and we succeed to rear L3 (infective) larvae in them. Based on this experiment and the scarcity of shell remnants of minute snails in faeces of wild hares we suppose the hares or rabbits get their lungworm infection by consuming mainly minute snails rarely infected with larvae of those worms. That exceptional way of the infection may be the reason for infrequent severe lungworm infection in lagomorph populations. The occurrence of lungworms in hares may be low in certain territories of Hungary as Békés, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok, Heves, and Bács-Kiskun counties because we could find only two infected animals on (our) search investigating 308 lungs of hares from these places. We conclude from the low prevalence of lungworms in hares and the high frequency of different land snails in almost all habitats of hares that the infection may be a rare event for the definitive host, because many larvae avoid the possibility to get into them. Several snail species can be infected by protostrongyles but only the small specimens can transmit the infection to hares and rabbits. Translated by Erzsébet Csobai - Gábor Majoros Majoros Gábor Szent István Egyetem, Állatorvos-tudományi Kar Parazitológiai és Állattani tanszék H-1078 Budapest, István u. 2. E-mail: majoros. gabor@aotk. szie. hu Csobai Erzsébet Drug Safety Associate, Medical & Safety Services ICON PLC Via Washington 70 20146 Milano, Italy E-mail: csobai. erzsebet@gmail. com 69
