Fauna Europaea provides a public web-service with an index of scientific names (including important synonyms) of all living European land and freshwater animals, their geographical distribution at country level (up to the Urals, excluding the Caucasus region), and some additional information. The Fauna Europaea project covers about 230,000 taxonomic names, including 130,000 accepted species and 14,000 accepted subspecies, which is much more than the originally projected number of 100,000 species. This represents a huge effort by more than 400 contributing specialists throughout Europe and is a unique (standard) reference suitable for many users in science, government, industry, nature conservation and education. Helminths parasitic in animals represent a large assemblage of worms, representing three phyla, with more than 200 families and almost 4,000 species of parasites from all major vertebrate and many invertebrate groups. A general introduction is given for each of the major groups of parasitic worms, i.e. the Acanthocephala, Monogenea, Trematoda (Aspidogastrea and Digenea), Cestoda and Nematoda. Basic information for each group includes its size, host-range, distribution, morphological features, life-cycle, classification, identification and recent key-works. Tabulations include a complete list of families dealt with, the number of species in each and the name of the specialist responsible for data acquisition, a list of additional specialists who helped with particular groups, and a list of higher taxa dealt with down to the family level. A compilation of useful references is appended.

Biology Centre České Budějovice Czech Republic

CABI Europe UK Egham United Kingdom

Central Laboratory of General Ecology Sofia Bulgaria

Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle Paris France

Natural History Museum London United Kingdom

Royal Veterinary College London United Kingdom

Thracian University Stara Zagora Bulgaria

University of Copenhagen Copenhagen Denmark

University of Eastern Finland Joensuu Finland ; University of Amsterdam Faculty of Science Amsterdam Netherlands

University of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä Finland

University of North Dakota Grand Forks United States of America

University of Oslo Oslo Norway

W Stefański Institute of Parasitology Warsaw Poland

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Setaria cervi (Filarioidea, Onchocercidae) undressing in ungulates: altered morphology of developmental stages, their molecular detection and complete sequence cox1 gene