Bucephalidae
Sign in to saveBucephalidae is a family of trematodes that parasitize fish. They lack suckers, having instead a muscular organ called a "rhynchus" at the front end which they use to attach to their hosts. The characteristics of the rhynchus are used to help define the genera of the family. It is one of the largest digenean families, with 25 genera containing hundreds of described species. Bucephalids are cosmopolitan, having been recorded all over the world. They are parasites of fish from freshwater, marine, and brackish water habitat types.
Species
FAMILY
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumPlatyhelminthes
- ClassTrematoda
- OrderPlagiorchiida
- FamilyBucephalidae
via GBIF
Museum specimens
- Specimen records
- 45
- Family
- Bucephalidae
- Collections
- USNM, NHMUK, CMN, QM
- Recorded in
- United States, Ghana, Australia, Mexico, Antarctica, Malaysia
~3 min read
Encyclopedic overview
2 sectionsContents
- Genera
- References
Bucephalidae is a family of trematodes that parasitize fish. They lack suckers, having instead a muscular organ called a "rhynchus" at the front end which they use to attach to their hosts. The characteristics of the rhynchus are used to help define the genera of the family. It is one of the largest digenean families, with 25 genera containing hundreds of described species. Bucephalids are cosmopolitan, having been recorded all over the world. They are parasites of fish from freshwater, marine, and brackish water habitat types.
The name Bucephalus, meaning "ox head", was originally applied to the genus Bucephalus because of the horn-like appearance of the forked tail (furcae) of its cercaria larva. By what Manter calls a "curious circumstance", horns are also suggested by the long tentacles of adult worms.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Bucephalidae” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.