Chromosomes of Two Species of Acanthocephalans Collected from the Fishes of Kashmir Valley, India

In the present study, karyotypes and chromosomes of two species of the families Pomphorhynchidae (Pomphorhynchus kashmirensis, Kaw 1941) and Neoechinorhynchidae (Neoechinorhynchus manasbalensis, kaw 1951) from intestinal tissues of Schizothorax and Cyprinus spps, were studied. Karyotypes of both the species is 2n=8 in which P. kashmirensis possess 4 submetacentric and 4 subtelocentric chromosome pairs whereas in case of N. manasbalensis first two pairs are metacentric, next two pairs are submetacentric and last 4 pairs are telocentric. The karyotype of N. manasbalensis seems to be more ancient, because its chromosomes are nearly telocentric. Such uniformity could be regarded as a plesiomorphic character of an ancestral karyotype.