This leads to severely compromised lung function and is a real problem for some of our endangered rock wallaby species,” says Dave.ĭave and colleague Ian Beveridge of University of Melbourne’s Department of Veterinary Sciences recently published a monograph on helminth parasites of Australasian monotremes and marsupials in the journal Zootaxa. “When the larval stage infects marsupials, the cysts tend to develop in the lungs rather than the liver.
The larval stage of this tiny tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus causes cysts in the liver and lungs of animals such as sheep and the adult lives in the intestines of dingoes, foxes and dogs. Hydatid cysts are well known in Australia. Kangaroos and wallabies generally tolerate infection, but in wombats it can lead to liver failure,” says Dr Dave Spratt, Research Fellow at our Australian National Wildlife Collection. “The sheep liver fluke, Fasciola hepatica, infects kangaroos, wallabies and wombats in areas where grazing overlaps. While many marsupials live reasonably happily with their helminth guests, some may experience serious disease when infected with particular helminths from domestic and introduced species. Matricidal hatching is the chosen means of reproduction of a roundworm that occasionally infects people in Australia, causing a life-threatening infection of skeletal muscle cells (stay tuned for more on the muscle-destroying nematode in a future blog post!). This is an excellent way for a mother worm to ensure that her offspring reinfect the host in which she lives, but means having children is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
In some species, eggs hatch inside the mother worm and develop to third-stage larvae before bursting from her head, killing her. Some species have evolved a horrific method of hatching, known to biologists as matricidal endotoky, or matricidal hatching. The flukes, tapeworms, roundworms and thorny-headed worms of our native vertebrates lead fascinating lives. Hitching a ride with our kangaroos, platypuses and koalas is the biodiversity you don’t normally see: parasitic worms, or helminths.
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