First Report of Dicrocoelium dendriticum from Sheep of Ladakh (J & K) – India

Dicrocoelium dendriticum is one of the most common trematode infecting the liver of ruminants throughout the world and poses a threat to livestock mostly by damaging the liver of the hosts especially in heavily infected animals. In the present study a large number of flukes were recovered from the livers of sheep of Ladakh. The morphological studies of these specimens revealed that they possess all the diagnostic characters of the species Dicrocoelium dendriticum (Rudolphi, 1819) Loos, 1899 as regards their shape and size of body, size of suckers, ovaries, and testes etc. However several minor intraspecific variations in size ratio of various body organs were observed as mentioned in table 1. Hence the present species were assigned to Dicrocoelium dendriticum (Rudolphi, 1819) Loos, 1899. The parasite has been reported for the first time from this region and hence it forms the first report. In addition some of the morphological parameters have been described for the first timewhich were not described by the previous authors these parameters could be of great taxonomic importance.