Procercoid

procercoid

[prō′sər‚kȯid]

(invertebrate zoology)

The solid parasitic larva of certain eucestodes, such as pseudophyllideans, that develops in the body of the intermediate host.

Procercoid

one of the larval stages of certain tapeworms (including the broad fish tapeworm). A procercoid is approximately 0.05 mm long and is spindle-shaped. The posterior end is distinct from the rest of the body and is equipped with three pairs of chitinoid hooklets. The procercoid stage is usually passed in the body cavity of copepods, which serve as the first intermediate hosts of many tapeworms. After the second intermediate host—a fish—swallows the parasitized copepod, the procercoid is converted in the fish’s body into the next larval stage—the plerocercoid.

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References in periodicals archive ?

Native and introduced fish ingest copepods containing procercoid larvae that develop into plerocercoids (16).

Salmon aquaculture and transmission of the fish tapeworm

The predominance of immature stages of the Asian tapeworms infecting convict cichlids in the spring season (2014) indicates that the intermediate host, a cyclopoid copepod carrying infective larval stage of the procercoids, had been recently consumed.

Asian fish tapeworm (Bothriocephalus acheilognathi) infecting a wild population of convict cichlid (Archocentrus nigrofasciatus) in Southwestern California

rams, procercoids inhabit the hemocoel of a cyclopoid copepod and the definitive host can be infected during its larval stage either by swallowing an infected copepod or as an adult by accidentally swallowing an infected intermediate host (Thomas 1937b; Jarroll 1979; 1980).

Bothriocephalus rarus (Cestoidea: Pseudophyllidea) from the dwarf salamander, Eurycea quadridigitata (Amphibia: Caudata), in southern Arkansas, with a review of this tapeworm species in other salamander hosts

Another possible route of transmission could have been drinking water contaminated with Spirometra procercoids.

Molecular identification of Spirometra erinaceieuropaei tapeworm in cases of human Sparganosis, Hong Kong