The Life Cycle of Dirofilaria uniformis Price and Transmission to Wild and Laboratory Rabbits

Abstract

Filarial worm infections available for laboratory studies have heretofore been limited to forms that are taxonomically and physiologically far removed from the Wuchereria spp. which cause human filariasis. A laboratory infection in a convenient host with a parasite more closely related to the human forms was the object of a study conducted at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center with the cooperation of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Attention was directed toward Dirofilaria uniformis Price, 1957, a parasite of the cottontail rabbit. The life cycle of Dirofilaria scapiceps (Leidy, 1886), a related species which occurs in a capsule in the tarsal bursa of Lepus and Sylvilagus, was elucidated by Highby (1943). He named five species of Aedes from Minnesota as vectors, and successfully transmitted D. scapiceps from the snowshoe hare to domestic rabbits. The life cycle of D. uniformis has been completed with the transmission to laboratory and wild cottontail rabbits, and the results are reported here.