Checklist of the Cestoda (Platyhelminthes) of Switzerland

A checklist, including all the cestode taxa recorded from Switzerland, their hosts, as well as deposited specimens available in scientific collections, is provided. The country has one of the richest European cestode faunas consisting of 251 species, almost all of them cyclophyllideans, that were identified in 190 vertebrate and 24 invertebrate host species. This is a very significant increase over the previous similar list that was established one century ago by Fuhrmann (1926). Since then, advances have been particularly important for parasites of mammals and birds although an important margin of progress remains for the latter as several bird families have been surprisingly little studied in the country. A large proportion of species described in Switzerland, including 22 that are represented by types, are available in public collections, most of them at the Muséum d'histoire naturelle de Genève. New reports were numerous in the second half of last century but have become scarce in recent decades. Today, tapeworms have been identified in no more than one third of Swiss vertebrate species and despite one century of progress, the true diversity of this fauna in the country remains to be determined.