Note on host-parasite relationships observed in fluke infections of wild aquatic birds

Abstract

The last twenty-five years have witnessed an increasing output of significant work in this country on the trematode parasites of a number of wild birds, including aquatic species. These studies, which are mostly faunistic, and can be said to have commenced in 1926, when Bhalerao (1926) described from Burma (then a province of India) the flukes of the house crow, deal primarily with a large number of representative species of nearly twenty families of Digenea. Of these families, species assignable to the Clinostomidae Lühe, 1901, the Cyathocotylidae Poche, 1926, the Cyclocoelidae Kossack, 1911, the Diplostomidae Poirier, 1886, the Echinostomatidae Poche, 1926, the Notocotylidae Lühe, 1909, the Opisthorchiidae Braun, 1901, and the Strigeidae Railliet, 1919, were encountered in a survey conducted to assess the nature of helminthic infections in wild aquatic birds of the Mathura area.