The Parasitological and Pathological Significance of Arrested Development in Nematodes

Abstract

In summarising, therefore, we conclude that a tendency to become dormant during the larval stage, which is so characteristic a feature of the free-living larvae of parasitic nematodes and is an essential requirement in their use of intermediate hosts is not an uncommon occurrence during their life in the final host. Its purpose in each instance is essentially the same, i.e. to carry it through a period in which the environment is unsuited to development; on the ground, for instance, where it waits for a suitable host, as a parasite of an intermediate host, where it waits for a suitable final host, or in a resistant final host where inhibited development serves the parasite in enabling it to wait until some depression of the host's state of resistance allows it to grow to maturity.