Helminths of the European otter

The target of this study was to explore a distribution and prevalence of parasitic helmints in population of wild European otters in the Czech Republic. For this purpose organization ALKA wildlife o.p.s. provided 15 cadavers of these animals. This gained experimental material was consequently subjected to a detailed parasitical examination. All examinations and analises were made in the parazitical laboratory of Department of Zoology and Fishers, Faculty of Agrobiology, food and natural resources in Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. The discovered parazitic organisms were subsequently isolated and determined. This autopsy showed the occurrence of parasitic flukes of genus Metorchis. Prevalence was counted 13.33 % (two positive samples from all fifteen samples). In the first sample, there were found 17 flukes, in the second sample, there were found 11 flukes. The place of discovery of this samples was southern Bohemia. The occurence of other expected representers of tapeworms, roundworms and acanthocephala were not confirmed. Results can be disorted because of low number of examined biological material. But getting bigger amount of material is a problem because the European otters are protected by law. The results show that in population of wild European otters occur parasitic flukes of genus Metorchis. Since this is the first mention of their occurrence in the Czech Republic, it would be appropriate to study this issue from now to get more results that would be more exact