Life Cycle
The life cycle for avian schistosomes is similar to that of human schistosomiasis. Adult flukes mate and produce eggs which are usually excreted with the bird's feces. Once in the water, the eggs hatch, liberating many miracidia. The miracidia, using their cilia, swim around eventually finding a molluscan intermediate host, usually a snail. In the snail, the miracidium develops into a sporocyst, which in turn develops into a daughter sporocyst or redia. Eventually, the sporocysts and rediae develop into cercariae. The cercariae exit the snail through feces and penetrate the skin of new avian hosts, migrating to blood vessels of the bird to mature into adults and complete the cycle. Humans become infected with cercarial dermatitis when they are exposed to the dermatitis-producing cercariae.
Read more about this topic: Trichobilharzia Regenti
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or cycle:
“Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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