Volume: 51 Issue: 1
Year: 2020, Page: 52-55,
Received: Aug. 6, 2019 Accepted: Sept. 3, 2019 Published: Jan. 1, 2020
A total of 80 snails collected from three habitats viz., uncultivated paddy fields, permanent water bodies and catchment area of dams in Palakkad district of Kerala were screened for presence of echinostome infection. The collected snails were identified morphologically as Indoplanorbis exustus and Lymnaea luteola. Indoplanorbis exustus was found to be the most predominant snail species followed by L. luteola with a prevalence rate of 57.5 and 42.5 per cent, respectively. The prevalence rate of snails was higher in uncultivated paddy fields followed by permanent water bodies and catchment area of dams. Overall prevalence of echinostome infection in snails was found to be 11.2 per cent. Prevalence of infection in I. exustus constituted 13 per cent while that in L. luteola was nine per cent. Dissection of positive snails revealed intra molluscan stages like sporocyst
Keywords: Snail, echinostome, cercariae
Bauri, R. K., Chandra, D., Lalrinkima, H., Raina, O. K., Tigga, M. N. and Kaur, N. 2015. Epidemiological studies on some trematode parasites of ruminants in the snail intermediate hosts in three districts of Uttar Pradesh, Jabalpur and Ranchi. Indian J. Anim. Sci. 85: 941-946.
Devi, P., Islam, S. and Das, M. 2006. Prevalence of freshwater snails in Assam. J. Vet Parasitol. 20: 81-84.
Devkota, R., Budha, P. B. and Gupta, R. 2011. Trematode cercariae infections in freshwater snails of Chitwan district, central Nepal. Himalayan J. Sci. 7: 9-14.
Dhar, L. C. S., Ahmed, K. A. and Rahman, S. 2017. Prevalence and abundance of trematode cercariae in freshwater snails of Fatepur union, Chittagong district, Bangladesh. Prevalence 20: 30.
Dung, B. T., Madsen, H. and The, D. T. 2010. Distribution of freshwater snails in family-based VAC ponds and associated waterbodies with special reference to intermediate hosts of fish-borne zoonotic trematodes in Nam Dinh Province, Vietnam. Acta. Tropica. 116:15-23.
Frandsen, F. and Christensen, N. O. 1984. Introductory guide to the identification of cercariae from African freshwater snails with special reference to cercariae of trematode species of medical and veterinary importance Taxonomic key. Act. Trop. 4: 181-202.
Jayawardena, U., Rajakaruna, R. and Amerasinghe, P. 2011. Cercariae of trematodes in freshwater snails in three climatic zones in Sri Lanka. Ceylon J. Sci. 39.
Ramitha, U. C. and Vasandakumar, M. V. 2015. Survey of freshwater snails in Malabar, Kerala and an account on the prevalence of infection by digenean (platyhelminth) parasites. J. Chem. Bio. Phy. Sci. 5: 4.
Sarmah, A.P. 1982. The fresh water cercarial fauna of Trichur. M.V.Sc thesis, Kerala Agricultural University, Mannuthy. 82 p.
Subba Rao, N.V. 1989. Fresh water molluscs of India. Zoological survey of India, Calcutta. 289p
© 2020 Anbarasu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Anbarasu, K., Rajagopal, A., Lakshmanan, B., Vinod Kumar, K., Devada K. and Thamil Bharathi L. M. 2020. A study on echinostome infection in snail intermediate hosts in different habitats of Palakkad district, Kerala. J. Vet. Anim. Sci. 51(1): 52-55.