Rodentolepis, Spasskii, 1954

Haukisalmi, Voitto, Henttonen, Heikki, Hardman, Lotta, Hardman, Michael, Laakkonen, Juha, Murueva, Galina, Niemimaa, Jukka, Shulunov, Stanislav & Vapalahti, Olli, 2009, Review of tapeworms of rodents in the Republic of Buryatia, with emphasis on anoplocephalid cestodes, ZooKeys 8 (8), pp. 1-18 : 11

Rodentolepis sp.

Rodentolepis sp. from Cricetulus barabensis was characterized by 22-24 fraternoid hooks. In this respect it resembles Rodentolepis fraterna (Stiles, 1906) (see Genov 1984) and R. sinensis (Oldham, 1929) (see Ryzhikov et al. 1978), although the hooks of the present species are somewhat longer (0.020 -0.032 mm) than those of R. fraterna . In addition, the scolex of the present cestode is significantly larger (0.24-0.26 mm) than that of R. sinensis , and its eggs are significantly longer (0.060 -0.075 mm) than those of R. fraterna . It is probable that Rodentolepis sp. from Buryatia represents an undescribed, host-specific species of C. barabensis . The high variation in hook length suggests that the material may include more than one species.

Zhaltsanova (1992) reported R. straminea (Goeze, 1782) from C. barabensis and Myodes rufocanus from Buryatia, but that identification is dubious, because many forms, including R. fraterna and R. nana (Siebold, 1852) , have been synonymized with R. straminea in the Soviet/Russian literature (see Ryzhikov et al. 1978).

Voucher specimen: MSB Endo 163 from C. barabensis (Sharaldai) .