A redescription ofWaddycephalus teretiusculus(Baird, 1862) Sambon, 1922 and a revision of the taxonomy of the genusWaddycephalus(Sambon, 1922), pentastomid parasites of Asian, Australian and Indonesian snakes, with descriptions of eight new species

✍ Scribed by J. Riley; J. T. Self

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 894 KB
• Volume: 3
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0165-5752
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00014856

✦ Synopsis

The genus Waddycephalus was founded by Sambon (1922) to accomodate a single species W. teretiusculus, a distinctive pentastomid known from a number of Australian (and an Asian) snakes. However, the species is more than unusually variable. By using a standardized annulus-counting procedure (paying particular attention to those annuli comprising the caudal extremity of females) in conjunction with comparative hook data, we show that this variation stems from the fact that the taxon embraces ten species. Three of these infect tree snakes and the remainder infect ground-dwelling snakes. In some cases two distinct species appear to infect a single species of host. In two of these cases geographical isolation might be responsible for the observed differences: the parasites were derived from two populations of the host species, one from the Australian mainland and the other from offshore islands. The taxon is widely distributed from South East Asia to Oceania and Australia.