ON MORPHOLOGY OF FASCIOLA GIGANTICA COBBOLD, 1885 RECOVERED FROM RUMINANTS OF

Fasciola gigantica is one among the most common trematode parasites infecting the liver of ruminants throughout the world and poses a threat to livestock mostly by damaging the liver of the hosts especially in heavily infected animals. In the present study a large number of flukes were recovered from the livers of ruminants of Ladakh. The morphological studies of these specimens revealed that they possess all the diagnostic characters of the species Fasciola gigantica Cobbold, 1885 as regards their shape and size of body, size of suckers, ovaries, and testes etc. However several minor intraspecific variations in size ratio of various body organs were observed as mentioned in table 1. Hence the present species were assigned to Fasciola gigantica Cobbold, 1885. The parasite has been reported for the first time from this region and hence it forms the first report. In addition some of the morphological parameters have been described for the first time which were not described by the previous authors these parameters could be of great taxonomic importance. A detailed summary of the parasite is given in the result section of the present paper