Bucephalus (trematode)

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Bucephalus
Bucephalus EncBrit1911.png
Cercaria larva of Bucephalus polymorphus from Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition
Scientific classification e
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Platyhelminthes
Class: Rhabditophora
Order: Plagiorchiida
Family:Bucephalidae
Genus:Bucephalus
Baer, 1827
Species[3]
Bucephalus anguillae Spakulova, Macko, Berrilli & Dezfuli, 2002
Bucephalus baeri Maillard, 1976
Bucephalus binidentacularis Wang, 1977[1]
Bucephalus elegans Woodhead, 1930[2]
Bucephalus haimeanus (Lacaze-Duthiers, 1854)
Bucephalus labracis Paggi & Orecchia, 1965
Bucephalus marinus Vlasenko, 1931
Bucephalus mytili Cole, 1935
Bucephalus polymorphus Baer, 1827
Bucephalus sp.
Bucephalus ("ox head") is the genus name for many trematode flatworms that are parasites
of molluscs and fish. Like other Bucephalidae, they are found in fish both as adults and as
metacercariae. In marine and freshwater teleosts, they live as parasites inside the digestive
tract, especially the intestine.[4]

Bucephalid cercaria larva from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (1904) The tail's
furcae give the impression of horns, hence the genus name "Bucephalus" meaning "ox
head."
The genus Bucephalus was based on the earliest known bucephalid, B. polymorphus Baer
(1827), initially described from a cercaria larva. Siebold (1848) believed that the adult
bucephalid he named Gasterostomum fimbriatum represented an adult form of the same
bucephalid, but this identity has never been proved.[5]

The name Bucephalus meaning "ox head" was chosen because of the horn-like appearance
of the forked tail (furcae) of its cercaria. By what Manter calls a "curious circumstance",
horns are also suggested by the long tentacles of adult worms.[6]

They are distinguished from other genera in the same family by having tentacles associated
with the anterior sucker. Genus members have their mouth in the middle of the body.[4]

An earlier name for this genus was Gasterostomum, given by von Siebold in 1848 to all adult
trematodes with a ventral mouth.[5] Odhner (1905) established two suborders of digenean
trematodes called Gasterostomata and Protostomata. The two genera in Gasterostomata
were Gasterostomum (now Bucephalus) and Prosorhynchus, of which the former has an
anterior sucker separate from its digestive tract and the latter has an anterior rhynchus.
Members of the ge