Parasitology Lab Exercises

PARASITOLOGY LAB EXERCISES

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

2006-2010

by

John Janovy, Jr.

Copyright © 2013 by John Janovy, Jr.

Smashwords Edition

**********

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment and academic use only. PARASITOLOGY LAB EXERCISES is free, but an author needs some encouragement now and then, so please tell your friends to download their own copies so that the numbers show up on my dashboard page (= the encouragement!) Thank you for respecting the author’s copyrighted work. I hope this book is of use to you.

Each week’s exercise has a set of materials to be used, objectives and outcomes, tasks, study questions, vocabulary to be mastered, and a list of the slides available for study. Students were required to complete a notebook with drawings, comments on drawings, essay answers to some of the study questions as required by the Teaching Assistant, and anything else the TA felt should be included. TAs also distributed their own syllabi, along with some additional instructions. There was a lab quiz every week after the first week. Each student had his/her own compound and dissecting microscope, and the lab was equipped with both a compound and dissecting microscope with video camera connected through a VCR to a large monitor. There was also a document camera and a flex-neck video camera that were attached to the monitor through a switch box. So TAs used video microscopy quite frequently in their teaching, including the weekly quiz. Labs were scheduled for three hours. TAs also devised a mid-term and final practical, and made the lab available for study time prior to those larger practical exams. Students also brought their textbook (FOUNDATIONS OF PARASITOLOGY) to lab.

Students were given printed copies of the lab exercises; those copies included a spreadsheet of the slides and specimens available, life cycle stages, type of preparation, and host. The exercises were also made available via course management software used by the university.

NOTE ON MATERIALS: Slides consisted of tissue smears, fecal smears, tissue sections, and parasite whole mounts, with both parasite sexes represented (if dioecius), and sometimes prepared with different stains. In addition to the slides listed, we also had various preserved specimens, e.g., Ascaris sp. for dissection, suspensions of helminth eggs (several species), and a fairly large collection of slides from wildlife collected over the past century, including specimens from the Cedar Point Biological Station classes. So there was quite a bit of comparative material that the TAs were free to use. In addition, we usually spent a lab period on fecal exams, with specimens contributed by the local humane society and/or pet store. When we did exercises on gregarine populations and communities in beetles, the insects were supplied from research stocks. Finally, most years the class also had a tour of the Manter Laboratory of Parasitology in the University of Nebraska State Museum research collections.

I would like to thank the many teaching assistants and others who contributed to the success of the parasitology program at UNL over the last century!!!

ISBN: 9781301073252

Table of Contents:

Week 1: Orientation

Week 2: Kinetoplastida

Week 3: Protistan Potpourri

Week 4: Flagellates

Week 5: The Amebas

Week 6: Apicomplexa I

Week 7: Apicomplexa II

Week 8: Introduction to Trematodes

Week 9: Trematodes Continued

Week 10: Schistosomes

Week 11: Tapeworms

Week 12: Nematodes

Week 13: Nematodes Continued

Week 14: Some Important Arthropods

Supplemental exercises:

Apicomlexan Parasites of Insects

Suggested Reading

***********

Week 1: Orientation, Use of the Microscope, and