Helminth parasites of vertebrates have been studied in Costa Rica for more than 50 years. Survey work on this group of parasites is far from complete. We assembled a database with all the records of helminth parasites of wild and domestic vertebrates in Costa Rica. Information was obtained from different sources such as literature search (all published accounts) and parasite collections. Here w...

Parasitic infections are a major theme in the "hygiene hypothesis", as allergies and autoimmune diseases are less prevalent in countries with higher burdens of helminths and other parasitic organisms. Helminths"-the grouping of multicellular worm parasites including nematodes, cestodes and trematodes-tend to establish long-lived, chronic infections indicating successful down-modulation of the h...

Rodents, as mice and rats are the most common laboratory animals used in research and testing. They are seldom investigated for autochthonous ecto- and endoparasites prior their utilization in the experiments. Helminth parasites can alter the interpretation of final results. Pinworms commonly infecting laboratory rodents include mainly the mice pinworms Syphacia obvelata and Aspiculuris tetrapt...

Parasitic helminth infection remains a global health problem, whilst the ability of worms to manipulate and dampen the host immune system is attracting interest in the fields of allergy and autoimmunity. Much progress has been made in the last two years in determining the cells and cytokines involved in induction of Type 2 immunity, which is generally protective against helminth infection. Inna...

Helminth parasites can cause considerable damage when migrating through host tissues, thus making rapid tissue repair imperative to prevent bleeding and bacterial dissemination particularly during enteric infection. However, how protective type 2 responses targeted against these tissue-disruptive multicellular parasites might contribute to homeostatic wound healing in the intestine has remained...

From August 2008 to July 2010, 1,471 fish belonging to the subfamily Goodeinae (representing 28 species) were collected from 47 localities across central Mexico and analyzed for helminth parasites. In addition, a database with all available published accounts of the helminth parasite fauna of goodeines was assembled. Based on both sources of information, a checklist containing all the records w...

Helminth Parasites of the Raccoon (Procyon lotor), Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), and striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) 35 Introduction Although the helminth fauna of the raccoon (Pro-cyon lotor), Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) and striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) is fairly well known, great gaps exist in our knowledge concerning the distribution of helminths of these hosts ...

A total of 79 chickens were randomly collected from 4 rural localities and processed to detect the presence of helminth parasites and their prevalences. Sixteen helminth species comprising 12 nematode and 4 cestode species were recorded from the 4 localities. Syngamus trachea and Cyathostoma spp. were the only helminth species recovered from the respiratory tract and the rest of the helminth sp...

Patterns in helminth community structure can suggest that various processes are acting to shape parasite communities into organised, nonrandom assemblages of species. It is not clear, however, whether a pattern observed in one host population at one time would be observed again at another time, or at the same time in a different but comparable host population. Here, we test the repeatability of...