Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Eucestoda
Summary
Eucestoda, commonly referred to as tapeworms, is the larger of the two subclasses of flatworms in the class Cestoda (the other subclass is Cestodaria). Larvae have six posterior hooks on the scolex (head), in contrast to the ten-hooked Cestodaria. All tapeworms are endoparasites of vertebrates, living in the digestive tract or related ducts. Examples are the pork tapeworm (Taenia solium) with a human definitive host, and pigs as the secondary host, and Moniezia expansa, the definitive hosts of which are ruminants.
Adult Eucestoda have a white-opaque dorso-ventrally flattened appearance, and are elongated, ranging in length from a few millimeters to 25 meters. Almost all members, except members of the orders Caryophyllidea and Spathebothriidea, are polyzoic with repeated sets of reproductive organs down the body length, and almost all members, except members of the order Dioecocestidae, are protandral hermaphrodites. Most except caryophyllideans consist of a few to 4000 proglottids (segments) that show a characteristic body differentiation pattern into scolex (head), neck, and strobila.
The scolex, located at the anterior end, is a small (usually less than 1 mm) holdfast organ with specific systems for fastening itself to materials: rostrum, acetabula, suckers, bothria, grooves, and hooks. The small neck region, directly behind the scolex, consists of an undifferentiated tissue region of proglottid proliferation, leading into a zone of increasing and continuous proglottid differentiation. As such, the main and largest section of the body, the strobila, consists of a chain of increasingly mature proglottids. These cytological processes are not well understood at present.
Members of the Eucestoda have no mouth or digestive tract, and instead absorb nutrients through a layer of microtriches over the tegument at the shared body wall surface. In addition to the body wall, several other systems are common to the whole length of the tapeworm, including excretory canals, nerve fibers, and longitudinal muscles.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.