L. Forró szerk.: Miscellanea Zoologica Hungarica 8. 1993 (Budapest, 1993)

Kriska, T.: Parasitic helminths of house mouse (Mus musculus Linnaeus, 1758) in Hungary

Table 3. Seasonal fluctuation of infection Winter Spring Summer Autumn n=62 n = 102 n= 102 n= 324 Species prev.% int. % int. % int % int. C.pus. 1.6 1.0 11.8 3.0 13.7 3.9 3.0 1.2 H.fra. 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 1.5 5.8 H.str. 1.5 9.0 3.9 8.7 4.9 5.6 1.2 10.0 T.tae. 18.7 1.2 18.6 1.2 7.8 3.9 12.4 1.1 M. sym. 6.4 2.0 1.0 5.0 6.9 10.3 2.7 7.4 T. mur. 11.3 21.0 6.8 4.4 5.9 3.8 y.

3 5.2 H. pol. 19.3 7.8 8.8 7.2 16.6 23.8 8.3 5.9 A. let. 14.5 15.4 17.6 25.8 28.4 39.9 16.0 20.9 S. obv. 1.6 29.0 9.8 18.2 3.9 22.0 5.2 20.5 S. str. 0.0 0.0 1.0 205 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 M. mur. 0.0 0.0 1.0 3.0 3.9 6.0 0.6 23.5 * seasons are calculated by meteorological scheme Apparently prevalence level of Syphacia obvelata is found to be lower than that of found in the literature. During the present study 5.4% prevalence was found while in Bulgaria 8.2 (Genov 1984) in France 52.6, in Poland 53.7, in Italy 58% (see Lukasiak 1954 for review) prevalence levels were found, at the same time other species showed only 1-2% prevalence there. In Hungary Aspiculuris tetraptera seemed to replace this species. Most of the species independently from their infection strategy were found to have spring-summer infection peak. This can be induced by the intensiveness of varying population size and age distribution of host populations during the spring period. In the case of C. pusilla and A. tetraptera both prevalence and infection levels show a summer peak. Some other species, Taenia taeniaeformis, Mathevotaenia symmetrica and Trichocephalus muris, however, have a winter peak as well, infecting those immature host specimens, which survived the autumn mortality. Acknowledgements This paper is an abbreviated version of my diplom thesis submitted at the Zoosystematical and Ecological Department of the Eötvös Loránd University. The work for this thesis was made in the Parasitological Collection of the Zoological Department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. My supervisor was Dr. Éva Murai to whom I am very much indebted for her generous help and for critically reading an earlier version of this manuscript. The field work was supported by the Hungarian National Research Fund (OTKA 3177/91). I thank Viktória Takács for the English translation. References Andreiko, O. F (1973): Parasites of Moldavian mammals.- Izd. Stiinca, Kishinev, 186 pp. (in Russian). Auffrai, J. C, Marshall, J. T, Thaler, L. & Bonhomme, F. (1990): Focus on the nomenclature of european species of Mus. - Mouse genome 88: 7-8. Baer, J. G. & Tenora, F (1970): Some species of Hymenolepis (Cestoidea) from rodents and from primates. -Acta Sc. Nat Brno 4(9): 1-32. Behnke, J. M. (1975): Aspiculuris tetraptera in wild Mus musculus. - J. Helminth. 49: 85-90.