Studies on Ostertagia spp. from Greenlandic sheep: arrested development and worm length

Studies were conducted to investigate earlier observations that lambs slaughtered in Greenland in late September/early October have relatively few arrested larvae in the abomasal mucosa and that the adult Ostertagia from such lambs are abnormally large. Post mortem examination of naturally infected ewes in mid-winter demonstrated that a significant proportion of their Ostertagia population was hypobiotic at this time of year, while an experimental study showed that considerable numbers of larvae of Greenlandic origin became arrested following cold conditioning for 10 weeks. A comparison of adult Ostertagia of Greenlandic and Britain origins from lambs experimentally infected with larvae cultured under identical conditions demonstrated that the "giant" size of the arctic worms was attributed mainly to environmental rather than genetic influences.