A revision of the subfamily Haplorchinae Looss, 1899 (Trematoda: Heterophyidae): I. The Haplorchis group

Abstract

Earlier schemes of classification of the family Heterophyidae have been based in large part on such features as shape of body, presence of oral spines, number and position of testes, and distribution of vitellaria (Witenberg, 1929; Ciurea, 1933; Mueller & Van Cleave, 1932). Price (1940a) was the first to make extensive use of features of the ventrogenital complex (ventral sucker, gonotyl, genital pore, terminal male duct) and excretory bladder, and produced the first reasonable classification of both the family Heterophyidae and the superfamily Opisthorchioidea. In despite of the obvious significance of the rationale of Price's approach, later authors (Morozov, 1952, 1955; Yamaguti, 1958) have largely ignored the ventrogenital complex and recently discovered life-history data, and have used much the same sorts of features as earlier authors.