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Updated: May 11, 2026

Mass Isolation and In Vitro Cultivation of Intramolluscan Stages of the Human Blood Fluke Schistosoma Mansoni
Published on: January 14, 2018
Hybridisation between the two major African schistosome species of humans
T Huyse1, F Van den Broeck, B Hellemans
1Institute of Tropical Medicine, Unit of Medical Helminthology, Antwerpen, Belgium. tine.huyse@bio.kuleuven.be
Abstract:
It is generally accepted that Schistosoma mansoni and Schistosoma haematobium, causing intestinal and urinary schistosomiasis, respectively, are not able to hybridise, due to the high phylogenetic distance between them. Cloning of nuclear internal transcribed spacer rDNA and partial mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase 1 fragments revealed two internal transcribed spacer rDNA genotypes within single eggs and miracidia, one identical to S. mansoni and the other identical to S. haematobium, suggesting hybrid ancestry. The cytochrome c oxidase 1 clones always belonged to only one of the parental species. This demonstrates that offspring of heterologous pairing between these two species is not (always) parthenogenetic.
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