Fauna europaea: helminths (animal parasitic).

Fauna Europaea provides a public web-service with an index of scientific names (including important synonyms) of all living European land and freshwater animals, their geographical distribution at country level (up to the Urals, excluding the Caucasus region), and some additional information. The Fauna Europaea project covers about 230,000 taxonomic names, including 130,000 accepted species and 14,000 accepted subspecies, which is much more than the originally projected number of 100,000 species. This represents a huge effort by more than 400 contributing specialists throughout Europe and is a unique (standard) reference suitable for many users in science, government, industry, nature conservation and education.

Alien species of parasites--some questions concerning terminology.

The article deals with some terms proposed by the proper institutions of the Council of Europe for describing the phenomenon of invasion of living organisms into new habitats. As these terms were elaborated mainly from the point of view of free leaving creatures, the goal of the authors was to discuss the possibility to adapt them for parasites species. Several propositions of resolving some difficulties have been presented'.

The Polish collection of parasitic helminths (a report on realization of works concerning fusion of parasitic collections dispersed among different scientific institutions).

The paper presents the results of works on preparation of a proper museum collection of parasitic helminths gathered by the Polish scientists and dispersed in various scientific institutions. The collection composed of 11 author's collections and a special collection of available typical series of species described by the Polish authors has been deposited in the Museum of Natural History of Wroclaw University. It includes almost 16.

New trends in research on parasite host specificity: a survey of current parasitological literature.

The main goal of this article is to attract attention of junior scientists interested in evolutionary and ecological parasitology, to some very interesting articles dealing with the methodology of such investigations. The authors review some problems related to terminology used in the studies of host-parasite relationships and then recapitulate the subjects of five articles, in which new indices of the range and characters of hosts specificity are proposed. These are: the article of Caira et al.

[The influence of Janicki cercomer theory on the development of platyhelminthes systematics and evolution investigations].

The aim of this article was to present the development of ideas about the provenience of parasitic helminths and the phylogenetical relationships within this taxon, since the publication of the "cercomer theory" just to nowadays. The following essentials of the Janicki theory are outlined: main differences between free-living Turbellaria and parasitic platyhelminths (ciliated epithelium in Turbellaria versus unciliated surface in the others); universality of the cercomer presence in Monogenea, Digenea and Cestoda; evolutionary changes in the morphology and function of the cercomer; homology of the caudal appendices of all parasitic helminths; the subsequent evolution of parasitic platyhelminthes from the ancestor to Monogena, Digenea and Cestoda; proposition to establish a new common taxon--Cercomerophora--for these three groups. In this background the evolution of evolutionary ideas is reviewed, divided into two periods: up to the eighties of the XX century, and up to date.

[Parasites as a natural element of any ecosystem].

The article presents some ideas upon the functioning of the parasite populations and communities in relation to the whole ecosystem. The author underlines that the parasites are one of the natural elements of every biocenosis and their existence submittes to similar ecological rules as the populations and communities of free-living organisms. Colonization of their particular environment (living organism) demands some adaptations allowing to resist immunological defense of the host, and to coexist with other parasite species harboured by the same host, not exploiting the supplies over the host "carying capacity", what could provoke the strong pathogenic effects, including host death.

[Is the parasite fauna of Poland well recognized?].

The studies of parasite fauna have in Poland a long tradition. Generally the helmint fauna of all groups of vertebrates was more or less examined and as much as over 100 species of Monogenea, almost 400 Digenea, over 250 Cestoda, about 500 Nematoda and 32 Acanthocephala have been recorded. The best recognized are the helminths of fish (especially those of Cyprinidae, Esocidae, Percidae and Salmonidae), frogs examined in various regions of Poland, some birds (especially connected with water environment: Anseriformes, Ciconiformes, Podicipediformes), most of insectivores (although examined only in few localities), European bisons, deers, foxes and wild boars (all under permanent monitoring), as well as domestic animals (cattle, horses, sheeps) and pets.

[A concept of parasite species at the times of molecular studies].

The problem of species recognition in relation to parasite organisms is discussed, based on literature data. Taking into account that over 20 species concepts have hitherto been formulated, the choice of characters, which should define a species differs from author to author. Lately the differences in some gene fragments are regarded as one of most important feature for species differentiation.