A survey of cestodes in birds of Manitoba

Abstract

A thorough knowledge of the fauna of a region must necessarily include an understanding of the parasitic forms of the area and their relationship to their hosts. The vertebrate forms in most regions are relatively well known, but a knowledge of the organisms that parasitize them is often quite scanty. For animals of major economic importance the parasite picture is well filled in, but this cannot be said for parasitism in our wildlife. Much remains to be done in this field. There have been general surveys of cestode parasites in vertebrates of North America, but a search of the literature reveals that records for many parts of Canada are rare. The cestode parasites of Canadian animals were reviewed by Wardle in 1933, but the list indicated that research had investigated the fish as hosts to a greater extent than the birds... Because of the small number of birds examined from any one area, no attempt will be made to evaluate quantitatively the results of these collections. In all, fifteen bird hosts are included in this survey.