Studies on the Life History and Development of Moniliformis dubius Meyer, 1933

Grassi and Calandruccio (1888) reported the occurrence of Echinorhynchus moniliformis (Moniliformis moniliformis) in the small intestine of Mus decumanus and Myoxus quercinus in Sicily. They found the common beetle Blaps mucronata to be the intermediate host, and three times the authors found more than one hundred juvenile E. moniliformis in the body cavity of a single Blaps. They fed several of these juvenile acanthocephalans to a young rat and two weeks later recovered worms 1 cm long. Calandruccio proved the susceptibility of man to infection with this acanthocephalan by ingesting the juveniles recovered from the beetle. Five weeks were required for the worms to reach sexual maturity. Magalhaes (1898) reported the occurrence of the juveniles of Moniliformis moniliformis (M. dubius) in the body cavity of Periplaneta americana collected in Rio de Janeiro. His identification of these larvae was made on the basis of shape, size, and distribution of the proboscis hooks, and was not verified by experimental feeding. Travassos (1917) found the juveniles of Moniliformis dubius (M. travassosi Meyer, 1933) in the body cavity of Periplaneta americana in Brazil. In preliminary attempts to infect cockroaches with Moniliformis dubius, Chandler (1921) reported negative results. However, in later work, investigators in Chandler's laboratory (Chandler, 1941) have had no difficulty in infecting P. americana with M. dubius.