DEVELOPMENT BY INJECTION IN SIMULIUM-DAMNOSUM SL OF 2 ONCHOCERCA SPECIES FROM THE WART HOG TO INFECTIVE LARVAE RESEMBLING TYPE-D LARVAE (DUKE, 1967)

Four wart hogs (Phacochoerus aethiopicus) examined in the Sudan savanna of North-Cameroon were all found infected with two types of skin microfilariae. One was O. ramachandrini Bain, Wahl and Renz, 1993, the adult worms of which live in the subcutaneous tissues of the feet. The other, smaller type belongs to a new Onchocerca species, the adult worms of which were not yet found. O. ramachandrini-microfilariae were evenly distributed across the whole body surface, those of Onchocerca sp. were concentrated on the back. The two species of microfilariae were isolated from an infected hide, separated under the dissecting microscope and injected into the thorax of pupae-hatched S. squamosum- and S. damnosum s. str. females. Both filariae developed in both flies at high rates (33 - 47% of injected microfilariae) and without pathological forms to infective larvae (L3). Both L3-species had a caudal tip, were long, slender and very motile and had a conspicuous glandular oesophagus. L3 from O. ramachandrini-microfilariae had a long glandular oesophagus (55 % of total L3 length), a round head and measured an average of 955 mum long and 19.2 mum wide. L3 from the other microfilaria-species were shorter (845 mum, P< 0.001) and thinner (16.7 mum, P<0.001) and had a shorter glandular oesophagus (36%, P<0.001), a shorter tail (P<0.01) and a conical head. Both L3-species, by their caudal tip, their long and slender silhouette, their great motility and their conspicuous glandular oesophagus resemble non-O. volvulus filarial L3 known, since many years, to occur in ''wild'' S. damnosum s.l. in Cameroon (Type D larvae, Duke, 1967) and in Liberia (Agamofilaria Type VI, Voelker and Garms, 1972). During our study, 13 such larvae were found in 12 wild S. damnosum s.l. from two geographically different areas of North-Cameroon and all identified as O. ramachandrini. The excellent development of the two Onchocerca species from the wart hog in S. damnosum s.l. after artificial infection, and the identification of all recently examined wild Type D larvae as O. ramachandrini suggest that S. damnosum s.l. is a natural vector of O. ramachandrini and that most (if not all) of the Type D larvae in onchocerciasis vectors in North-Cameroon originate from wart hogs.