Family Heligmonellidae

                                 Revised 01/14/26

Classification:

Phylum Nematoda

  Class Chromadorea

Chromadoria

            Rhabditida

Rhabditina

           Heligmosomoidea

           Heligmonellidae (Skrjabin & Schikhobalova, 1952) Durette-Desset & Chabaud, 1977

Primarily parasites of rodents, rabbits and insectivores.

Four Subfamilies seperated in part by the orientation of ridges in the synlophe (Durette-Desset, 1983):

• Brevistriatinae - parasites of rabbits, rodents and mouse-deer, old-world rodents and Muridae; synlophe ridges at 67-90 degrees.
• Helligmonellinae - parasites of insectivores, rabbits and rodents, Talpidae and lagomorphs; synlophe ridges at 0-45 degrees.
• Nippostrongylinae - parasites of rabbits, rodents, Hyrax, insectivores, Cricetidae; synlophe ridges at 45-67 degrees.
• Pudicinae - parasites of rodents, new world caviomorphs, Dasyproctidae, Cricetidae and lagomorphs; synlophe ridges at 67-90 degrees.

• Buccal capsule reduced to annulus; lips absent; cephalic vesicle present;
• Synlophe with longitudinal cuticular ridges continuous or discontinuous; careen present or absent; oblique axis or axes of orientation; not bilaterally symmetrical;
• Bursa of various types, mainly 2–2-1, less commonly 1–3-1 or 1–4, never 2–1-2;
• Female monodelphic;
• Tail without spine.

 Heligmonellids are major components of the helminth parasites of murid rodents (Rodentia: Muridae). In general, nematodes of this family are small and coiled.  Often a rodent is infected by more than one species. Hosts include rodents, rabbits and insectivores.

The development of new technology will be necessary to clearly assess species composition of heligmonellids in a host. Metagenomic analysis has been applied to determine the real diversity and species richness of the helminth community of murids (Tanaka et al., 2014; ). Clearly, a metagenomic analysis should be supported by accurate identification based on morphological taxonomy (Hasegawa et al., 2017).

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References

Asakawa, M., Ohbayashi, M. 1986. A new nematode, Yatinema japonicum gen. et sp. n. (Heligmonellidae: Nematoda) from voles, Eothenomys smithi Thomas and E. niigatae (Anderson). Japanese J. Vet. Res. 34:7-23.  

Beveridge, I., Spratt, D.M.  and Durette-Desset, M-C. 2014. Order Strongylida (Railliet and Henry, 1913). In Schmidt-Raesa, A. (ed). Handbook of Zoology: Gastroctricha, Cycloneurelia and Gnathifera. Vol 2. Nematoda. De Gruyter, Berlin

Durette-Desset, M-C. 1983. Keys to genera of the superfamily Trichostrongyloidea. In CIH Keys to the nematode parasites of vertebrates, Anderson and Chabaud eds,. CABIo

Durette-Desset, M-C. and Justine, J-C. 1991. A cladistic anaklysis of the genera in the subfamily Pudicinae (Nematoda, Trichostrongyloides, Heligmonellidae). Int. Jour. Parasitol. 21:579-587

Durette-Desset, M-C., Hugot, J.P., Darlu, P. and Chabaud, A.G. 1999. A cladistic analysis of the Trichostrongyloidea. Int. Jour. Parasitol. 29:1065-1086.

Hasegawa, H., Dewi, K., Fitriana, Y., Asakawa, M. 2017.  Nippostrongylus smalesae sp. nov. (Nematoda: Heligmonellidae) collected from Maxomys whiteheadi (Rodentia: Muridae) of Sumatra, Indonesia.  Zootaxa 4323:579-585.

Tanaka, R., Hino, A., Tsai, I.J., Palomares-Rius, J.E., Yoshida, A., Ogura, Y., Hayashi, T., Maruyama, H. & Kikuchi, T. 2014. Assessment of helminth biodiversity in wild rats using 18S rDNA based metagenomics. PLoS ONE, 9, e110769. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110769.

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