Fish Diseases and Management

4.1.2.3 Cestoda

Cestodes are oviparous and the eggs laid are passed in the faeces of the final host which hatch to release a free-swimming larva, the coracidium. This is eaten by an invertebrate copepod intermediate host. Coracidium develops into procercoid, a stage which can infect the fish. When a suitable secondary host eat the procercoid, it penetrates through the gut wall and encysts in the viscera or musculature where it develops to the plerocercoid stage. When this infected fish is eaten by a final host (fish, a bird or a mammal) the larvae completes the life cycle by becoming an adult.

(diagram)