Ascaridida

The order Ascaridida includes several families of parasitic roundworms with three "lips" on the anterior end. They were formerly placed in the subclass Rhabditia by some, but morphological and DNA sequence data rather unequivocally assigns them to the Spiruria. The Oxyurida and Rhigonematida are occasionally placed in the Ascaridida as superfamily Oxyuroidea, but while they seem indeed to be Spiruria, they are not as close to Ascaris as such a treatment would place them.^[1]

In an alternate taxonomic treatment, the Ascaridida are ranked as an infraorder Ascaridomorpha.

The suborder Dioctophymatina is doubtfully valid; it contains a mere 2 families, one of which is monotypic. Most Ascaridida are placed in the suborder Ascaridina. These "worms" contain a number of important parasites of humans and domestic animals.

Important families include:

• Anisakidae, also called the "marine mammal ascarids". The larvae of these worms cause anisakiasis when ingested by humans, but do not reproduce.
• Ascarididae, which includes the giant intestinal roundworms (Ascaris spp.).
• Cosmocercoides, which includes taxa that parasitize certain amphibians
• Toxocaridae, which includes parasites of canids, felids, and raccoons, but which can unsuccessfully parasitize humans and cause visceral larva migrans.

These all belong in the superfamily Ascaridoidea.

Footnotes

References

• Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) (2002): Nematoda. Version of 2002-JAN-01. Retrieved 2008-NOV-02.