405 
ON TWO NEW SPECIES OF THE CESTODE GENUS 
OOCHOBISTICA FROM LIZARDS. 
By H. A. BAYLIS, M.A. 
(With Plate XXL) 
(Published by \permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 
The cestodes of lizards have received little recent attention from systematic 
zoologists. Those inhabiting snakes are much better known than they were 
a few years ago, thanks to the researches of La Rue (1914) and of Rudin 
(1917). The cestodes of snakes almost all belong to the family Ichthyotaeniidae 
(genera Crepidobothrium, Ophiotaenia, Acanthotaenia). Among the lizards also, 
several species of Acanthotaenia occur in the Monitors ( Varanus ), and one is 
recorded in Lialis, one of the Pygopodidae. The Monitors are also the hosts 
of a remarkable genus of quite a different type— Duthiersia —our knowledge 
of which has recently been brought up to date by Beddard (1917), and of 
another genus— Pancerina —of an equally distinct type. 
Among the more typical families of lizards, however, so far as we know at 
present, no representatives of these genera occur. On the other hand, a type 
represented by the genus Oochoristica Liihe (1898), is here prevalent. This is 
a genus which (as at present defined) occurs also in certain Marsupials and 
Edentates. It is placed near to the above-mentioned genus Pancerina in 
Ransom’s (1909) scheme of classification of the Taenioid Cestodes, and is 
probably closely related to it, although Pancerina has a double set of repro¬ 
ductive organs in each segment, whereas in Oochoristica there is only a single 
set. 
The Lacertidae and related families of lizards seem, therefore, as regards 
their cestode fauna, to link up on the one hand with the Yaranidae, and on the 
other hand with the Mammalia. One species of Oochoristica , it should be 
mentioned, has also been described from a snake (0. rostellata Zschokke (1905), 
from Zamenis). 
The species of Oochoristica described from lizards up to the present are 
not numerous, and most of the descriptions existing are far from complete. 
Even the type-species—0. tuberculata (Rud.), from Lacerta ocellata —has only 
been briefly characterised by Liihe (1898). An opportunity having presented 
itself, therefore, of studying two species from lizards, 1 have thought it de¬ 
sirable to describe them in some detail, especially as the genus requires better 
definition, and this will not be possible until more species have been fully 
