The Eucestoda is particularly relevant for questions concerning reproductive investment in male gametes because no other parasitic group displays such diversity in testis size and number within and among species. This diversity has long been used as a valuable taxonomic character, but few researchers have ever investigated its evolutionary significance. In this paper we investigate the evolutio...

The ultrastructure of the male reproductive system of Didymocystis wedli was studied for the first time, demonstrating spermiogenesis and spermatogenesis at different cell stages. The spermatozoa morphology was compared with that of other Digenea species. It was observed that the different cells of the spermatogenesis process follow the classic pattern reported for the majority of the parasitic...

We propose a new procedure for clustering nucleotide sequences based on the “Laplacian Eigenmaps” and Gaussian Mixture modelling. This proposal is then applied to a set of 100 DNA sequences from the mitochondrially encoded NADH dehydrogenase 3 (ND3) gene of a collection of Platyhelminthes and Nematoda species. The resulting clusters are then shown to be consistent with the gene phylogenetic tre...

The usefulness of the ultrastructural characters of spermiogenesis and of the spermatozoon in the interpretation of relationships in the Platyhelminthes has been widely demonstrated. The present paper provides a review and an update on the ultrastructural knowledge on spermiogenesis and on the spermatozoon in cyclophyllidean cestodes. For each family of cyclophyllideans the pattern of spermioge...

Traditionally, regeneration research has been closely tied to flatworm research, as flatworms (Plathelminthes) were among the first animals where the phenomenon of regeneration was discovered. Since then, the main focus of flatworm regeneration research was on triclads, for which various phenomena were observed and a number of theories developed. However, free-living flatworms encompass a numbe...

Ten species of Macrostomorpha were found in marine environments of the Algarve (Portugal). Six of them were found in the Ria Formosa, a vast intertidal euryhaline lagoon system that dominates the most Eastern coast of the Algarve: two unidentified species of Microstomum Schmidt, 1848, Macrostomum cf. rubrocinctum Ax, 1951 and two unidentified species of Macrostomum Schmidt, 1848, Paromalostomum...