A cytogenetic study on the rodent tapewormRodentolepis myoxi

Abstract

AbstractThe karyotype of glirid tapewormRodentolepismyoxi(Rudolphi, 1819) (Cestoda: Hymenolepididae) comprises six pairs of small bi-armed chromosomes (2n = 12). All pairs of chromosomes possess uniform morphology, i.e. metacentric, submetacentric or meta-submetacentric types of structures. The formula of the karyotype structure is n = 2m + 1m-sm + 3sm. The absolute chromosome length ranges from 3.78 to 2.00 μm. The mean total length of the haploid complement is 15.98 μm. The first pair (group A) is the largest, pairs 2 and 3 can be grouped into group B while pairs 4–6 are smaller and can be classified as group C. The number of chromosomes ofR.myoxiis the same for the congeneric species, however, karyological characteristics differ from all recently known karyotypes of rodent hymenolepidids.