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The selection of experimental doses and their importance for parasite success in metacercarial infection studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2009

R. POULIN
R. POULIN*
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand
*
*Corresponding author: Tel: +64 3 479 7983. Fax: +64 3 479 7584. E-mail: robert.poulin@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
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Summary

Experimental studies of parasite transmission are essential for advances in basic and applied parasitology. A survey of the results of published experiments can identify the determinants of both variation among studies in experimental design and of parasite infection success. Here, analyses are conducted on data compiled from a total of 106 metacercarial infection experiments (35 on Echinostomatidae, 37 on Fasciolidae, 34 on other trematodes) obtained from 83 studies. All of these involved experimental oral infection of individual definitive hosts by a single known dose of metacercariae under controlled conditions. Across these studies, the metacercarial dose used (i) was typically about 10 times higher than the average natural dose that could be acquired by feeding on intermediate hosts (for taxa other than Fasciolidae), and (ii) showed a positive relationship with the body mass of the definitive host, although this relationship was only significant for Fasciolidae. Although the chosen dose was rarely justified, the larger the definitive host, the more metacercariae it received. Among Echinostomatidae and Fasciolidae, there was also a significant dose-dependent effect on infection success: the higher the dose used in an experiment, the smaller the proportion of metacercariae recovered from the host. This effect was mitigated by definitive host body mass, with infection success being generally lower in larger definitive hosts. For Echinostomatidae, the taxonomic identity of the definitive host also mattered, with metacercariae achieving higher infection success in mammals than in birds. The present findings suggest that the design of experimental infection studies requires greater consideration if their results are to yield useful biological insights.

Keywords

TrematodaEchinostomatidaeFasciolidaedose-dependencehost body massmethodological artefactstransmission
Type
Research Article
Information
Parasitology , Volume 137 , Issue 5 , April 2010 , pp. 889 - 898
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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