The prevalence of Linguatula serrata nymphs in one-humped camel (Camelus dromedarius) in Northwest of Iran

The Linguatula serrata is a toungue-shaped parasite that infections carnivores or insectivorous reptile as final host and herbivores as intermediate ones. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of nymphal stages of L. serrata in mesenteric and mediastinal lymph nodes of camels which slaughtered in Tabriz slaughterhouse, Northwest of Iran. In this study, a total of 185 camels (121 males 64 females) of different ages were examined from April 2010 to June 2011 for L. serrata of which 25(13.5%) were found to be infective. The mesenteric lymph nodes of 18 (9.7%) and the mediastinal lymph nodes of 4 (2.1%) out of 185 camels were infected. No significant difference (P>0.05) was found between the infected male and female animals but the infection rate increased with age (P<0.05).