![]() ![]() They have no mouth, but absorb nutrients directly from the host's gut. Tapeworms anchor themselves to the inside of the intestine of their host using their scolex, which typically has hooks, suckers, or both. The adult tapeworm has a scolex (head), a short neck, and a strobila (segmented body) formed of proglottids. Some six thousand species have been described probably all vertebrates can host at least one species. Some cestodes are host-specific, while others are parasites of a wide variety of hosts. For example, Diphyllobothrium has at least two intermediate hosts, a crustacean and then one or more freshwater fish its definitive host is a mammal. Typically the adults live in the digestive tracts of vertebrates, while the larvae often live in the bodies of other animals, either vertebrates or invertebrates. ![]() Species of the other subclass, Cestodaria, are mainly fish infecting parasites.Īll cestodes are parasitic many have complex life histories, including a stage in a definitive (main) host in which the adults grow and reproduce, often for years, and one or two intermediate stages in which the larvae develop in other hosts. Their bodies consist of many similar units known as proglottids-essentially packages of eggs which are regularly shed into the environment to infect other organisms. Most of the species-and the best-known-are those in the subclass Eucestoda they are ribbon-like worms as adults, known as tapeworms. Cestoda is a class of parasitic worms in the flatworm phylum (Platyhelminthes). ![]()
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