Family Heligmonellidae

                                 Revised 04/09/26

Classification:

Phylum Nematoda

  Class Chromadorea

Subclass Chromadoria

           Order  Rhabditida

Suborder Rhabditina (also as Trichostrongylina)

           Superfamily Heligmosomoidea

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

Primarily parasites of rodents, rabbits and insectivores; cosmopolitan distribution.

Four Subfamilies separated 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.

Nematodes in the family Heligmonellidae are usually minute, forming complex coils and resembling each other in appearance, identification based on morphological characteristics is often difficult (Asakawa and Hasegawa, 2018). 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., Hasegawa, H. 2018. Redescription of Heligmonoides vladimiri Sadovskaja, 1952 (Nematoda: Heligmonellidae: Nippostrongylinae) parasitic in the striped field mouse, Apodemus agrarius (Rodentia: Muridae), of the Far East. Biogeography 28:34-40.

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.

Smales, L. 2019. Gastrointestinal nematodes of Paramelomys platyops (Rodentia: Muridae) from Papua Indonesia and Papua New Guinea with the descriptions of a new genus and five new species of Heligmonellidae (Nematoda: Trichostrongylina) and a key to the species of Hughjonestrongylus. Zootaxa 4678 (1):107-125. https//doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4679.1.7

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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