| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,300,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 1998: ¥2,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,800,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Intestinal ciliate species compositions were surveyed on the horse in Japan, hylux in Saudi-Arabia, capybara in Bolivia and hippopotamus in Zambia. The ciliate composition of the horses was similar to those in various areas in the world, suggesting that horse has maintained a stable ciliate composition since the ancestor of world horses acqired intestinal ciliates. Abnormally large sized ciliate was found from the large intestine of hylux which has been considered as a primitive ungulate. This ciliate had unique inner structures, in which those structures were far different from those found in rumen isotrichid ciliates. From this fact, intestinal ciliate in hylux seems to be phylogenetically separated from the ciliates in the other hind-gut fermenting animals. In capybara, most of the intestinal species were of peculiar, however, one genus, Cycloposthium, was common with that found from horse and rhinoceros. Although hippopotamus is not hind-gut fermenter but fore-gut fermenter, it had the ciliate belonging to the genus Monoposthium which had been found from hind-gut fermenters. The comparison of the ciiate compositions among these host animals showed that there seems to be close co-evolution of intestinal ciliates related to the phylogenesis of host animals.
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