| Abstract: | A new genus Brachylepis gen. n. hymenolepididean cestodes associated with common shrews (Sorex) in Siberia and Russian Far East is created. These genus includes three species removed from the genus Mathevolepis: Brachylepis morosovi (Karpenko, 1994) comb. n. (type species), B. sorextscherskii (Morosov, 1957) comb. n. and B. triovaria Karpenko, 1990) comb. n. The new genus is characterized by the gradual strobila with a little number of segments, unarmed scolex with apical glandular organ, by lack of internal seminal vesicle and differential seminal receptacle, by form of uterus as horse shoe in young worms and buble-like in mature worms. A tendency of inverse proportional dependence between the number of uterus segments in the strobila and the number of hexacanths in the uterus has been noticed. The table of differential characters for the species of the genus Brachylepis is proposed. |
