A Békés Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 34. (Békéscsaba, 2011)
Csobai Erzsébet - Majoros Gábor: A nyulak tüdőférgeinek köztigazdái és a végleges gazda fertőződésének módja
Csobai Erzsébet - Majoros Gábor YAMAGUTI 1961 Yamaguti, S.: Systema Helminthum III. The Nematodes of Vertebrates I. Interscience Publ. Inc., N.Y. 1961. 492-513. ZDÁRSKÁ 1960 Zdárská, Z.: Larválni stadia cizopsnych cervu z nasich suchozemskych plzu. (A csehszlovákiai szárazföldi csigákban előforduló parazitikus féreglárvák.) Ceskoslovenská parasitologie, 7. (1960) 355-379. Intermediate hosts of lungworms of lagomorphs and the way of infection in definitive host- Erzsébet Csobai - Gábor Majoros - Resume Parasitic protostrongylid lungworms which cause nodular pneumonia in mammals occur in obligate herbivorous host such as rabbits and hares in spite of their need for terrestrial snails as intermediate hosts for their development. Only few research have been done on the lungworm diseases of hares so far and most of them dealing with the developmental stages of the parasite and the pathological effects caused by the worms. The life cycle of several protostrongylid lungworm species has been clarified with help of artificial infections of definitive and intermediate host, but some details of the mode and route of the infection of final hosts is still disputed. Researchers disagree over the question whether the infectious larval stage infects the definitive herbivore host while still enclosed in the body of the snail acting as intermediate host - or whether it leaves the snail and infects the vertebrate host as a free living form. Arguments, some supported by laboratory observations, were presented for both possibilities, but the process has not been studied under natural conditions. We have investigated the circumstances for the ingestion of larvae of lungworms in hares to reveal how they acquire their protostrongylid infection. In an experiment with house rabbits and their lug worms, Xerolenta obvia snails were reported to be perfect hosts for larval development of protostrongyles of hares and rabbits. We proved that those snails are adequate intermediate host of protostrongyles of hares also in the natural circumstances but we were unable to feed house rabbits with such living snails when we had left the choice to the rabbits themselves. The size of X. obvia snails in (our) experiment had reached ten millimetres. We observed the snails with that size carrying fully developed larvae in their muscles but they might not have been consumed by the definitive host of worms. We could not observe the living protostongylid larvae getting out of those 68
