Home > Community > How can Taenia solium (tapeworm) lay 35,000 eggs per proglottid?
Upvote

23

Downvote
+ Reproduction
+ Eggs
Posted by
Nyx Cult Questions

How can Taenia solium (tapeworm) lay 35,000 eggs per proglottid?

Armando  Follow

The eggs are very small compared to the proglottid.

According to this site:

T. saginata can be up to 4 to 6 meters long and 12 mm broad; it has a pear-shaped head (scolex) with four suckers but no hooks or neck. It has a long flat body with several hundred segments (proglottids). Each segment is about 18 x 6 mm with a branched uterus (15-30 branches). The egg is 35 x 45 micrometers, roundish and yellow-brown. It has peripheral radial striations and contains an embryo with 3 hooklets.

T. solium is slightly smaller than T. saginata. It has a globular scolex with four suckers and a circular row of hooks (rostellum) that gives it a solar appearance. There is a neck and it has a long flat body (0.1 meter in length). The proglottids are 5 x 10 mm with a 7-12 branch uterus. The eggs of T. solium and T.  saginata are indistinguishable.

I assume that the measurements given for the T. solium proglottid relate to the dimensions of your diagram, and since this is a tapeworm it is thinner than either of these values, so let's assume 2 mm to make the arithmetic easy.

volume of proglottid = 5 * 10 * 2 * 10-9 = 100 * 10-9 = 10-7 m3.

The egg approximates to a 40 µm sphere = 33,500 * 10-18 m3

So, volume of 35,000 eggs = 1.2 * 10-9 m3

So, volume occupied by eggs = (1.2 * 1010-9 * 100)/1010-7 % of proglottid = 1.2 %

So, not much of an accommodation is required for the volume of the eggs, even allowing for errors in this approximation (e.g. I neglected spherical packing which would add somewhat to the volume occupied by the packed eggs).

More

Upvote

VOTE

Downvote