Abstract
NO English-speaking zoologist is likely to have overlooked the exhaustive work on the life-cycle of Trypanosoma lewisi, recently published in the Quart. Journ. Microsc. Sci. (vol. lx., part 4), by Prof. A. E. Minchin and Mr. J. D. Thomson. This great research involved the dissection of 1700 rat-fleas (Ceratophyllus fasciatus), and Prof. Minchin gives, in the last number of the Journal of the Quekett Microscopical Club (2, vol. xii., No. 76), as a kind of by-product, some details of the anatomy of the insect. The nervous system, reproductive organs, and salivary glands receive special attention. In the nervous system there is a curious sexual dimorphism, the male having eight distinct abdominal ganglia, while the female possesses only seven. The salivary glands of the larva are much larger than those of the adult, and the larval duct is provided with a reservoir, wanting in the corresponding imaginal structure; these differences are correlated with the well-known difference in the nature of the food, the flea being a blood-sucker, while the larva devours solid particles-commonly the excreta of the rat. Students of insect anatomy will be grateful to Prof. Minchin for his detailed account of his simple and successful methods of manipulation.
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C., G. Recent Entomological Research. Nature 95, 687–688 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/095687a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/095687a0