HELMINTH-PARASITES OF CONVENTIONALLY MAINTAINED LABORATORY MICE

The spectrum of intestinal parasites present in the Swiss Webster C57B 1/6 and DBA/2 mice strains from different animal houses was identified and prevalences compared. Three parasites were observed during the co urse of this study, namely the cestode Vampirolepis nana (Siebold, 185 2) Spasskii, 1954 (= Hymenolepis nana) and the nematodes Aspiculuris t etraptera (Nitzsch, 1821) Schulz, 1924 and Syphacia obvelata (Rudolphi , 1802) Seurat, 1916. The scope of this investigation has been widened to also include morphometric data on the parasites, to further simpli fy their identification, since the presence of helminths in laboratory animals is regarded as a restricting factor for the proper attainment of experimental protocols.