The potential of nematophagous fungi to control the free-living stages of nematode parasites of sheep: pasture plot study with Duddingtonia flagrans.

The potential of nematophagous fungi to control the free-living stages of nematode parasites of sheep: Pasture plot study with the fungus Duddingtonia flagrans. Vet. Parasitol. The experiment was designed to test the ability of D. flagrans to reduce infective larval populations on pasture after passage through the gastrointestinal tract of sheep. Merino sheep were given chlamydospores by intra-ruminal infusion at a rate of 5 million chlamydospores/sheep/day and faeces collected from these sheep was deposited on pasture plots. Numbers of larvae recovered from faeces and pasture were both lower on plots from sheep dosed with fungus (P < 0.001 and P < 0.01, respectively) than on plots from control sheep.