“Parasitic adaptations

in Helminths”
A presentation compiled
from various sources by
Dr. PARVISH PANDYA,
Zoology Dept. Bhavan’s College, Andheri.

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

Sites from which presentations have been downloaded and later editted.
I am indeed thankful to them for their kindness and support :
http://esg-www.mit.edu:8001/esgbio/cb/org/organelles.html
http://faculty.pnc.edu/jcamp/parasit/parasit.html
http://www.amnh.org/rose/hope/creatinghope/
http://www.biology.eku.edu/SCHUSTER/bio%20141/POWERPOINT
%20NOTES/Intro%20to%20Protozoa_files/fullscreen.htm
http://www.biosci.ohio-state.edu/~zoology/eeob405/
http://www.tulane.edu/~wiser/protozoology/pwpt/
http://www.iep.water.ca.gov/suisun/photos/wildlife.html
http://www.uta.edu/biology/marshall/2343/
http://www.uta.edu/biology/faculty/faculty.html
http://www.okc.cc.ok.us/biologylabs/Documents/Zoology/PowerPoint.htm
http://bio.fsu.edu/
http://www.aw-bc.com/
http://www.nhm.org/
http://www.geo.cornell.edu/eas/education/course/descr/EAS302/presentations/

It is very easy to find mistakes in these presentations…..I request you to kindly

rectify them and supply me the modifications needed at parvishpandya@yahoo.com
Thanks a lot and have fun in teaching & learning Zoology….
Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
 Phylum Platyhelminthes &
Aschelminthes = Helminth worms

flatworms
Selected characteristics:
Anatomy: thin and flat;
digestion - free-living and parasitic forms
excretion - protonephridia (flame cells)
nervous - 1st CNS;ganglia, 2 ventral nerve
cords, eyespots, auricles

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

 Triploblasts

Acoelomates Pseudocoelomates
Coelomates
Platyhelminthes Nematoda
Gastrotricha? Rotifera
Nemertea?

Protostomes
Mollusca Onycophora Deuterostomes
Annelida Nemertea? Echinodermata
Arthropoda Bryozoa? Hemichordata
Tardigrada Chordata

Protostome Deuterostome
mouth from blastopore mouth not from blastopore
Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
1. Phylum Platyhelminthes: Flatworms are
acoelomates with gastrovascular cavities
• There are about 20,000 species of flatworms
living in marine, freshwater, and damp terrestrial
habitats.
– They also include many parasitic species, such as the
flukes and tapeworms.
• Flatworms have thin bodies, ranging in size from
the nearly microscopic to tapeworms over 20 m
long.

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Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
 Phylum Platyhelminthes

• Flat worms
• Triploblastic
• Acoelomate
• Bilateral symmetry
• Hermaphroditic
– Monoecious
• One opening for digestive
system
• Ladder nervous system

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

Flatworms
are divided
into four
classes:
Turbellaria
Monogenia
Trematoda
and
Cestoidea

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Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
 1. Class Turbellaria

• free-living flatworms planarians (Dugesia)

highly branched gastrovascular
• cavity pharynx - muscular
• opening to gastrovascular cavity

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 Class Turbellaria

• Eye spots
• Ciliated surface
• Regenerate if cut in
two

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Turbellarian Pharynx
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Platyhelminthes
• the most primitive bilateral animals?
• 80% parasites (derived)
• specialization potential
• Class Turbellaria
• respiration
• many w/symbionts for the O2
• increased respiration rate
• some deep (5 cm) sediment hunters
w/ hemoglobin and symbionts

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

• Flatworms have an
excretory system
called protonephridia,
consisting of a
branching network of
dead-end tubules.
– These are capped by a
flame bulb with a tuft
of cilia that draws
water and solutes from
the interstitial fluid,
through the flame
bulb, and into
the tubule system.
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Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
• Flatworms and other bilaterians are
triploblastic, with a middle embryonic tissue
layer, mesoderm, which contributes to more
complex organs and organs systems and to true
muscle tissue.
• While flatworms are structurally more complex
than cnidarians or ctenophores, they are simpler
than other bilaterans.
– Like cnidarians and ctenophores, flatworms have a
gastrovascular cavity with only one opening (and
tapeworms lack a digestive system entirely and
absorb nutrients across their body surface).
– Unlike other bilaterians, flatworms lack a coelom.
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Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
• Planarians and other flatworms lack organs
specialized for gas exchange and circulation.
– Their flat shape places all cells close to the
surrounding water and fine branching of the digestive
system distributes food throughout the animal.
– Nitrogenous wastes
are removed by
diffusion and simple
ciliated flame cells
help maintain
osmotic balance.

Fig. 33.10

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Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
Turbellarian GI tracts
• increasing complexity
microturbellarians
Acoela
• simple pharynx
• no gut cavity

macroturbellarians
Tricladia (3-branched)
• tubular protrusible pharynx
Polycladida (multi-branched) - marine
• 3-brached protrusible pharynx

pharynx plicatus
Protonephridia
• excretory
• osmorgulatory
• flame cells
• filtration
• selective absorption
Sensory structures
• brain (ganglia)
• net-like nervous system
• variable number of longitudinal
nerve cords
• evolutionary trend toward
net reduction
• bilateral brain
• paired longitudinal nerve cords
• “pigment cup” ocelli (no. varies)
• strong negative phototaxis
• sensory pits -> chemoreception
• complex behaviors - learning
 Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Phylum Platyhelminthes: Class Turbellaria

Acoelomate

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Parenchyma
• tissue connecting muscles and gut
• large flatworms: mesenchymal cells in an extracellular matrix
• small flatworms: matrix minimal or absent
• liquid in some some fw forms - hydrostatic skeleton + internal transport
• parenchymal cells types
• epidermal replacement cells
• neoblasts - totipotent, wound healing
• fixed parenchymal cells - join cells and tissues
• low-resistant pathways for intercellular transport of metabolites
2. Classes Trematoda and Monogenea

• flukes
• parasites
• many feed with oral suckers and microvilli
• oral and ventral suckers used to attach to host
• gastrovascular cavity - not branched
• hosts: primary-where sexual reproduction of parasite
occurs
• intermediate-no sexual reproductive stage of parasite
• Examples: Schistosoma mansoni - human blood fluke
• Clonorchis sinensis - Chinese liver fluke

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

 Class Trematoda

• Flukes
• Parasites
• Holdfast devices
– Most
• Complex life cycle
• Intermediate host
– Animal with juvenile stage
• Definitive host
– Animal with adult stage

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

• Trematodes parasitize a wide range of hosts,
and most species have complex life cycles with
alternation of sexual and asexual stages.
– Many require an intermediate host in which the
larvae develop before infecting the final hosts
(usually a vertebrate) where the adult worm lives.

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Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
 Fascioloa hepatica

• Sheep liver fluke

• Sheep, cattle and man
– Weight loss
• Eat vegetation with
metacercaria

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 Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Generalized
Fluke

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 Phylum:
Platyhelminthes
Class:
Trematoda
Fluke

Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings Fig. 46.6
Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Life CycleDr. of the Sheep Liver Fluke

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Schistosoma

• Blood flukes
• 200 million people
• 1 million deaths/year

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• The blood fluke
Schistosoma infects
200 million people,
leading to body
pains,
anemia, and
dysentery.

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Life Cycle of a Schistosome Fluke

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Schistosome

• Cercaria have forked

tail

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Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
 Class Cestoidea

• Tape worms
• No digestive system
• 40 feet long

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

 3. Class Cestoda
• tapeworms
• parasitic
• no digestive cavity
• body: head = scolex
• proglottids = body sections containing male and
female sex organs
• Examples: human tapeworms; pigs, cows, and fish
are intermediate hosts
• Sushi - tapeworm infestation has risen with the
popularity of this dish
• ??Filariasis?

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

• Tapeworms (class
Cestoidea) are also
parasitic.
– The adults live mostly in
vertebrates, including
humans.
• Suckers and hooks on the head
or scolex anchor the worm in
the digestive tract of the host.
• A long series of proglottids,
sacs
of sex organs, lie posterior to
the scolex.
• Tapeworms absorb food
particles from their hosts.
Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
• Mature proglottids, loaded with thousands of
eggs, are released from the posterior end of the
tapeworm and leave with the host’s feces.
– In one type of cycle, tapeworm eggs in
contaminated food or water are ingested by
intermediary hosts, such as pigs or cattle.
– The eggs develop into larvae that encyst in the
muscles of their host.
– Humans acquire the larvae by eating undercooked
meat contaminated with cysts.
– The larvae develop into mature adults within the
human.

Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
Platyhelminthes
• rhabdoids and rhabdites
• some expel rhabdites to ensnare prey and gather detritus
• duo-glands (adhesive and releaser glands)

• multi-ciliated cells
• pedal waves
• muscles
• looping
Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Pork Tapeworm

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(Taenia solium)
Scolex

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Proglottid

Testes
Uterus
Vas deferens

Seminal receptacle

Ovary

Yolk gland

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Life Cycle
of the
Broad-Fish
Tapeworm

Diphyllobothrium
latum

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 Aschelminthes? Ecdysozoans?
• the molting aschelminths
• ecdysone-like steroids
• 4 molts during development
• multi-layered collagen cuticle
• epidermis often syncytial
• continue to grow between molts
• eutely

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

Phylum Nematoda

• 12,000 species
– 500,000 possible
• Cylindrical body
• Only longitudinal
muscles
• Noncellular cuticle
with several layers
• Pseuodcoelomate
• Mouth and anus

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

 Nematodes

• Found everywhere
– Soil
– Oceans
– Polar ice
– Hot springs
• Parasites of nearly all
plant and animal
species!

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Musculature and Movement
• no circular muscles - no peristalsis
• dorsal and ventral longitudinal muscles
• innervation – muscle processes extend to nerve cords
• high internal pressure 10 x greater than most inverts
• rigid cuticle, partially contracted muscles
• round
• sinusoidal waves

Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation

Feeding
• 6 muscular lips (often fused to 3)
• muscular pharynx moves food and keeps gut
lumen open
• pharyngeal glands lubricate + enzymes
• digestion mainly extracellular
• wastes voided by the minute

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Respiration and Circulation
• diffusion

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Dr. PARVISH PANDYA’s presentation
 females sluggish
males active

12 US spp., 2 common

little host specificity

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Internal and
External
Features of a
Nematode

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Nematode Reproductive Systems
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 • Roundworm of man
• 1.2 billion people in US
Ascaris • Females lay 200,000 eggs a day
lumbricoides • Unsanitary habits contaminate ground
• Night soil
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Dioecious

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Life Cycle of Ascaris lumbricoides

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 Trichinella spiralis
• Trichina worm
• Pigs, bear, dogs, cats,
rats and man
• Trichinosis
– Encysts in muscles

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 Life Cycle of Trichinella spiralis

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 Wuchereria bancrofti
• Lives in lymphatic
system
• Obstruct lymph to
cause swelling
– Elephantiasis

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Elephantiasis

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Life Cycle
of
Wucheria spp.

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The End

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