9] PROTEOCEPHALIDAE — LA RUE 



HISTORICAL DATA 



Rudolphi (1808-10) collected together the results of the systematic 

 labors of helrainthologists up to that time. His work is very complete 

 and in it are to be found the diagnoses, synonymy and descriptions of 

 the species of this genus that were known at that time. These species 

 are included in the genus Taenia Linnaeus 1758. It is to be noted that 

 Rudolphi renamed certain of these species which had been previously 

 established by other investigators. Later Rudolphi (1819) brought 

 down to date a summary of the investigations of preceding helmin- 

 thologists. 



Some of the early investigators, other than Rudolphi, who reported 

 species now included in the genus Proteocephalus, were Goeze, 0. F. 

 Miiller, Pallas, Gmelin, Batsch, Schrank, Zeder, Bloch, and Froelich. 

 Many of their descriptions and diagnoses were very short. Only a few 

 were accompanied by drawings. It is needless to say that the works 

 of these early investigators are almost entirely concerned with the study 

 of external characters. There were no more important works which 

 have to do with this group of cestodes until the time of Dujardin (1845) 

 and Diesing (1850). These investigators listed several new species and 

 new host species. 



Investigators up to the time of Monticelli (1891) with the excep- 

 tion of Weinland (1858) considered this group of fish cestodes to belong 

 to the genus Taenia. The latter author proposed the name Proteocepha- 

 lus which will be discussed later and the former proposed the name 

 Tetracotylus. It was von Linstow (1891) who first pointed out that 

 the fish species made up a closely related group within the genus Taenia. 

 He made the first careful study of one of the species of this group. 



Monticelli (1891) made a careful study of the group and pointed 

 out several misinterpretations relating to the genital organs. He first 

 showed the true relationships of the organs in the interovarial 

 space. His work was largely based on Taenia coryphicephala with 

 which he compared other species. In all he listed 20 species belonging 

 to his genus Tetracotylus. Of these species some were from snakes. 

 For a more complete discussion of that work see the description of 

 Monticellia (Tetracotylus). Since this work of Monticelli, Lonnberg 

 (1894) proposed the genus Ichthyotaenia and in this genus many species 

 have been included. The range of hosts includes amphibians, snakes, 

 lizards, and all the larger groups of freshwater fish. 



