Rev 01/17/2024
Chromadorea
Rhabditia
Rhabditida
Strongyloidea
Protostrongylidae
Type species of the genus: Varestrongylus pneumonicus Bhalerao, 1932
Synonyms:
Strongylus Muller, 1780
Protostongylus Kemenskii, 1905
Synthetocaulus Railiet & Henry, 1907
Bicaulus Shults & Boev, 1940
Type species of the genus (Varestrongylus pneumonicus) reported from Bharal - wild blue sheep - (Pseudos nayaur), Hodgson argali (Ovis ammon hodgsoni), Siberian ibex (Capra sibirica filippii), and Tibetan goat (Capra sibirica).
Infections of caribou are reported with the lungworm, Varestrongylus eleguneniensis.(Loginova et al., 2023).
Rangifer is considered a secondary definitive host for V. eleguneniensis, with muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) a primary host (Verocai et al. 2014). Loginova et al (2023) consider that there is a possibility that V. eleguneniensis (and O. macrotis) were translocated and introduced to the Taimyr area of Russia with muskoxen from Alaska and Canada. Apparently 30 muskoxen were introduced to Taimyr in the 1970s: ten of them from Banks Island (western Canada) and twenty came from Nunivak Island (western USA). By 2011 they had increased to 7200 animals (Argunov 2018).
Argunov, A.V. 2018. Alien species of the mammalian fauna in Yakutui. Russian J. Biological Invasions 9:313-326.
Dougherty, E.C., Goble, F.C. 1946. The Genus Protostrongylus Kamenskii, 1905 (Nematoda: Metastrongylidae), and Its Relatives: Preliminary Note. J. Parasitol. 32:7-16.
Loginova, O.A., Kolpashchikov, L.A. Spiridonov, S.E. 2023. First report of Orthostrongylus sp. (Nematodea: Protostrongylidae) in wild reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) from Taimyr, Russia: Nearctic parasites in a Palearctic host. Helminthology 122:685-689.
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