A Taxonomic Revision of the Nematotaeniidae Luhe, 1910 (cestoda, Cyclophyllidea)

A taxonomic revision of the Nematotaeniidae, involving the examination of over 400 specimens, was undertaken. Some new taxonomic characters have been introduced to allow distinction of the various species. The family contains 18 recognized species in four genera. The genus Nematotaenia Lühe, 1910 contains four species, namely N. chantalae Dollfus, 1957, N. dispar (Goeze, 1782) Lühe, 1910, N. hylae Hickman, 1960, and N. tarentolae Lopez-Neyra, 1944. N. kashmirensis Fotedar, 1966, N. dollfusi, Yuen & Fernando, 1974 and N. viride Mokhtar-Maamouri & Chakroun, 1984 are considered junior synonyms of N. dispar. N. aurangabadensis Chincholikar & Shinde, 1975, N. lopezneyrai Soler, 1945 and N. mabuiae Shinde, 1968 are considered species inquirendae: the latter species probably belongs in the genus Oochoristica Lühe, 1898 (Anoplocephalidae: Linstowiinae). The genus Cylindrotaenia Jewell, 1916 is shown to possess two testes per segment and not one as originally proposed:Baerietta Hsü, 1935 is consequently synonymized with Cylindrotaenia. Cylindrotaenia is divided into five species-groups on the basis of adult morphology. The first group contains two American species, namely C. americana Jewell, 1916 and C. idahoensis (Waitz & Mehra, 1961) n. comb. The second group contains species from Australia and New Zealand, namely C. allisonae (Schmidt, 1980), n. comb., C. criniae (Hickman, 1960) n. comb., C. decidua (Ainsworth, 1985) n. comb., C. hickmani (Jones, 1985) n. comb. and C. minor (Hickman, 1960) n. comb. A third species group consists of C. jaegerskioeldi (Janicki, 1926) n. comb., C. magna n. sp. and C. philauti Crusz & Sanmugasunderam, 1971 and occurs in Africa, Sri Lanka and Japan. The fourth group, apparently restricted to Japan, contains a single species, C. japonica (Yamaguti, 1938) n. comb. The fifth group contains C. montana (Yamaguti, 1954) n. comb. and occurs in Japan and Tibet. C. quadrijugosa Lawler, 1939 is synonymized with C. americana, and Baerietta claviformis Yamaguti, 1954 is synonymized with C. japonica. C. baeri (Hsü, 1935) n. comb., C. chilensis (Puga & Franjola, 1983) n. comb., C. diana (Helfer, 1948) Lehmann, 1960, C. malayi (Yuen & Fernando, 1974) n. comb. and C. roonwali Nama, 1972 are species inquirendae. The genus Distoichometra, Dickey 1921 contains a single species, namely D. bufonis Dickey, 1921. D. kozloffi Douglas, 1958 and Baerietta enteraneides (Helfer, 1948) Yamaguti, 1959 are reduced to synonymy with D. bufonis. Bitegmen n. g. is proposed to accomodate a single species, B. gerrhonoti (Telford, 1965) n. comb., which was previously included in the genus Baerietta. The present distribution of the Nematotaeniidae is largely related to that of their anuran hosts. Nematotaeniids probably arose in Gondwanaland