Abstract
The infective third stage larvae of hookworms infect their hosts by active skin invasion, and they find and recognize their hosts by the behavioural phases of activation, directed crawling, and penetration. Here we analyse the orientation of the infective larvae of the human hookworms Necator americanus and Ancylostoma duodenale when crawling on surfaces. Their behaviour differed from that of the larvae of the dog hookworm Ancylostoma caninum, but the two species also differed from each other. N. americanus crawled towards light, but A. duodenale did not. Both species migrated towards the warm ends of thermal gradients, and this response was more sensitive than in other skin-invading helminths (threshold 0.09°C/cm). However, A. duodenale turned back and accumulated at higher temperatures than N. americanus [turn-back 45.7 (44.5–49.9) vs 41.5 (38.5–43.9)°C; accumulation 43.6 (41.6–46.0) vs 39.5 (37.9–43.0)°C]. In contrast to other skin-invading helminths, both species showed no chemo-orientation towards skin compounds when crawling on surfaces. This behaviour may reflect adaptations for reaching the skin surface from hairs or adhering material, but the differences in the orientation of the two species could not be attributed to differing transmission strategies.
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Acknowledgements
This work was carried out at the Research Center of Hasanuddin University, Makassar, Indonesia and at the Institute for Zoology, Erlangen, Germany. We thank our Indonesian counterparts Drs. A. Mangali, I. Patellongi, A.M. Afdal, E.Y. Singka and the members of their teams for their valuable help with the field surveys and the sample collections and Christina Loy and Bety Sapada for their expert technical work. We also wish to thank Professor Gerhard Schad for advising and encouraging us during this project. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung, and DAAD. The experiments performed in this work comply with the current laws of Germany and Indonesia.
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Haas, W., Haberl, B., Syafruddin et al. Infective larvae of the human hookworms Necator americanus and Ancylostoma duodenale differ in their orientation behaviour when crawling on surfaces. Parasitol Res 95, 25–29 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-004-1256-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-004-1256-8